Artificial intelligence will either take our jobs away or help our society improve productivity overall, sometimes both. According to Tolga Kurtoglu -CEO of Parc- humans and AI will work together in virtually every job one can think of. That is an intriguing statement, as many people may not feel comfortable working together with an AI. It seems we cannot avoid AI affecting our jobs in one way or another.

Can Humans and AI Really Work Together?

Saying we will see collaborative efforts between AI and humans is one thing, but turning it into a reality is something else entirely. The Parc CEO feels trustable artificial intelligence will be the next frontier. We need to come up with ways to make AI solutions trustworthy in the eyes of humans. This means discouraging the AI from taking away people’s jobs, turning against their human creators, and destroying the planet if science fiction movies are to be believed.

Trust can only be established if humans and AI are given a chance to work together. In the job sector, this much easier said than done, and it seems highly unlikely the human mind will be able to keep up with AI. This is especially true if artificial intelligence solutions will continue to evolve at the accelerated pace we have seen over the past few years. The creation of computational agents will lead to some interesting results regardless.

Forming a collaborative team consisting of humans and AIs would be rather interesting to see. While it is true AI solutions have some significant advantages over humans, they miss that “human touch” when it comes to working. There is a big difference between screwing in the nuts for a car and completing marketing campaigns, for example. One can be done by robots and AI alone, whereas the other will clearly need some human touch to make everything look crisp.

The bigger question is whether or not human workers will be open to the idea of such a symbiotic relationship. Many people are very wary of disruptive technologies and may hold off on embracing AI for quite some time to come. The technology still remains largely unproven when left to its own devices entirely. Solving problems together is something everyone can look forward to and it will create a very different work environment.

Slowly but surely, humans have started to surround themselves with virtual helpers. Siri on your iPhone, Echo in the living room, and Cortana on the computer are just some examples of how we are slowly getting used to collaborating with AI solutions. Do keep in mind none of these solutions are used on an industrial scale which will take at least a few more years. However, it shows humans and AI technology can indeed work together, at least to a certain degree.

Future collaborations between both “species” will heavily hinge on how advanced artificial intelligence can become. If such a solution were able to share its own advice and opinions with a human, new thought processes can be created. We need to learn how both AIs and humans come to certain conclusions and see if the method for doing so can be fine tuned for future references. An interesting future awaits us, and collaboration may be the only way forward.