how can humans compete with the robots
TRANSCRIPT
Based on press comments and venture capital investment, the future of professional services is “Robo”
Robo-financial advisorsRobo-investorsRobo-doctorsRobo-teachersRobo (self-drive) cars
Robo – professionals are valued for their speed of operation, ability to make fast decisions, ability to shift through vast qualities of data and their lack of human biases and weaknesses.
Its Robo Time
The question is, what happens if computer systems, based on artificial intelligence, replace many professional services jobs in the same way that industrial machines replaced manual jobs in the industrial revolution?
Professionals have three choicesAccept it and retrain Protest and try to
stop it
Get more emotional
The Cyborg Phase of Development
In the Brave New Robo World, if you want to get ahead get in touch with your feelings.
The feeling professional can work with the machine, creating a new hybrid:
The Professional Cyborg.
The psychologist and one of the founders of behavioural economics, Daniel Kahneman, has explained that the human mind consists of two systems:
System 1: intuitive, emotional, sub-conscious. This is controlled by the Limbic system or the emotional (mammalian) brain. Thinks Fast
System 2: rational, conscious, “me”. This is associated with the human part of the brain, the Cerebral Cortex that controls higher functions. Thinks Slow
Human strengths and weaknesses
We are less human than we thinkWhen we think of a decision we have made or try to explain why we felt a certain way, we employ system 2 to rationalise our choice or feelings.
But the actual choice and the actual motive for feeling a certain way in most cases is taken largely by System 1.
The reason?
Using System 2 is effortful and slow. Imagine trying to decide which chocolate bar to buy. Your human brain (System 2) will have to rationally consider the various shapes available, pack sizes, brands, prices, coca content, wrappers, wrapper colours and designs. This is no longer a five-minute decision. To short-cut the process, System 1takes over and sub-consciously makes a decision based on a simple set of factors.
System 2 (the part of the brain we think of as “me”) is far less in control than we think.
The short cut to successMaking decisions can be hard
If we weighed up and compared every possible option on every possible decision we had to make, we would never make a choice.
System 1 comes to the rescue!
System 1 employs heuristics or simple rules of thumb to make choices. This:
speeds decision making makes life liveable (yes we can decide what food we
want to eat) but can come at a cost.
The pros and cons of heuristicsThe cons
Taking short cuts when making a decision can result in
Judging others by easily observable traits – gender, race, height, hair colour, nationality
Basing your judgements on the opinions of others (e.g. financial bubbles, fad diets)
Buying a product purely on the brand name or because a celebrity endorses it.
Assuming tomorrow will be like today, favouring Jam today over Jam tomorrow.
The technical specification (System 2 territory) is regulated to the small print at the bottom (if it is there at all), while the brand image and sexy photos of the car (System 1 territory) dominate. If our emotions were not so powerful advertising would not work.
The pros
System 1 holds our experiencesOnce learned an experience or lesson is moved to System 1 for fast retrieval. The Result
High levels of intuitive behaviour, sometimes confused with premonition
Rapid escape from dangerous situations
Avoiding bad situations because of gut instinct.
The pros and cons of heuristics
Professionals accumulate many years of experiences which are stored in System 1, meaning this knowledge is ready for fast retrieval and is often fed to the conscious mind in the shape of an emotional feeling rather than a rational evaluation. Sometimes you just know something is right or something is wrong.
How the Cyborg solves the problemsThe machine has no emotional attachment
to a previous way of thinking, it can be reprogrammed and can take a dispassionate view of new evidence.
The Cyborg decision maker gets most of its System 1 from the human and most of its System 2 from the computer.
The computer System 2, unlike the human, is fast and can compare a multitude of factors quickly but it stills needs human gut instinct and experience to make the best choices.
If humans, according to Daniel Kahneman, Think Fast and Think Slow, the Cyborg decision maker Thinks Fast
and Thinks Fast.
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