Eric Colson (2019) has provided a great opportunity to reflect on augmentation. His post is titled What AI-Driven Decision Making Looks Like (link).
In his post, Eric observes “data holds the insights that can enable better decisions; processing is the way to extract those insights and take actions. Humans and AI are both processors, with very different abilities”.
He visualises this human and AI interaction in this way:
This approach celebrates the culture that provides the context for the use of AI. Eric concludes:
They key is that humans are not interfacing directly with data but rather with the possibilities produced by AI’s processing of the data. Values, strategy and culture is our way to reconcile our decisions with objective rationality. This is best done explicitly and fully informed. By leveraging both AI and humans we can make better decisions that using either one alone.
We have written about our approach to this interaction (link) and our interest in human intelligence as a facilitator of partnerships. We recognise that there is a long history in the discussion of augmentation of which Eric is one of the most recent examples.
Our aim is to make this augmentation a fundamental issue in the development of our Academy of Qualitative Analytics (link). We also intend to address the gendered essence of AI and the practice of augmentation (link).
In our partnerships, we seek to use qualitative insights to augment strategies in place, contribute to redefinitions of performance and, wherever possible, present actionable insights.
This augmentation includes conversations about:
Decision-making effectiveness
Intensity and momentum
Advantages and vulnerability
Drivers and connectors of performance
Control
We see these conversations as essential to develop a shared practice of performance excellence. Like Eric Colson, we hope to lead considerations of augmentation in which AI and human contributions are included and built natively into our workflows.
