Human for AI? Or AI for Human?

Originally published on LinkedIn · December 05, 2024

Human's role in AI Or AI's role in human's life?

It does. It does matter.

In Chemistry terms, it's like solute and the solvent.

Is human a solute or solvent in the overall amalgamation mixture with AI's role in our daily life and existence?

For me, human role should be 'solvent' and AI is the 'solute'

(For simple understanding, in a solution, a solute is a minority molecular portion while solvent is the majority/big one that dissolves the solute in it)

So, then, the right way to say or bring discussions is, AI's role in human's life...

Then, where did the twist happen or rather, when did the twist happen?

If you are still with me until here, you may read on...

With thumping hearts, the technologists and scientists proudly presented many scientific advancements over centuries.

As a fellow technologist, data scientist, a home-bird with all sciences (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Statistics, Machine learning, Data science, Quantum physics in miniature form for now and an ardent student soaking myself up with many other scientific researched studies) and being an analytical thinker, I belong to this school. But, not to this very thought that science is all there's to know in a human existence.

And, if you take any random sample of renowned scientists of all time across the globe, they all seem to converge / bend with humility sorts to the overpowering nature of mysteries of Universe, cosmos and have expressed their own philosophical, mysterious, mystical nature of human existence and the Universe's wonders.

What does that tell you?

For me, it tells me that science is a reflective and reactive method to understand, discover, identify patterns, structures using set logical frameworks while constantly pushing the boundaries to dent into the newer areas not delved into before. This is how we have been evolving with respect to scientific advancements.

And while science, scientists, scientific advancements give a structure to think through and they are absolutely critical to keep, what's slipping terribly is the other vital organ, human mind and intelligence.

If we look at Autism, as an example area for human evolution, a few decades ago, this wasn't even diagnosed as such, and we didn't know how to handle this challenge if a loved one has this natural phenomenon of mental makeup. And, for decades, it was looked down upon as something that's unwanted or even blamed parenting for something that's beyond a human's sphere of control as it's not a behavioral discipline to teach but a condition to understand more and better and bring harmonious co-existence. [Watch this true event based movie, 'Temple Grandin' for some idea of an American scientist who was autistic and her struggles while growing up]

The above example is one of the ideas I'm presenting to showcase how technology or scientific both medical and other scientific advancements are for improving human's life, human condition of life and lifestyle. We need to have checks and balances in how technology is leveraged and what the human's role has been and will continue to be.

An area in our high-tech sciences of AI and Gen AI, it's about the astronomy, efforts to go to Mars, continually enhance our understanding our solar system, other multiverses etc., but in the last few decades, we have gotten the sciences more to the masses, to more lucrative businesses and daily life that we all can relate, touch and feel and now we can't live without some of them.

While it's stunning to be where we are with AI and the sharp rise of Gen AI with it's potential to do human like mental rigor with autonomous agents doing more intelligent tasks, complex critical thinking, it has left an unseen, unfelt void in human's life.

The enormous power of human is its mind.

Human Mind is an array of intuition, imagination, creativity, subconscious mind that has a historical data from millions of years of human existence...

With AI and it's unnatural power in human's life, it's easy to get swept away in it's force and give in and suspend the human mind altogether.

But, is this where we are all headed?

Is this what will get us to the evolution we would like to be in?

I'd bet any real human will say NO to the above.

Where are some of the faults and fallacies?

1. It's the idea that AI and Gen AI will do it all and human intelligence or natural intelligence is a secondary component. This will not take us where we want go.
2. Even with some now leaning into talking about human's role as an augmention to AI, they still miss the beat. It goes back to the title and the conundrum of, is it AI for human or Human for AI.. With this mindset, we are essentially saying, it's human for AI...
3. AI is for human - for better health, for better results, for quickness of results with accuracy and efficiency, for better lifestyle and quality of existence. In everything we do, it's for improving human race's life towards upcurve and not the other way around serving AI.
4. With social media, the behaviors of people are not tapped into for gleaning good benefits for amplifying the human condition. This is an unstructured data, not even remotely close to the ones we talk in terms of disparate datasets to synthesize. This is much bigger than just data, big data, biggest data... This is a whole NEW DIMENSION to unlock.

Coupled with human intuition, a need for good, clear thinking, critical thinking ==> creates qualitative content from each of us online

• + we tap into human's social behavior for social intelligence in methodical constructs
• + each human's mental health awareness, emotional health, spiritual health and combine various ways to bring frameworks for betterment at large.
• + we use other data sets, facts towards truth seeking process and build a story for human's condition
• ==> This is where we meet the human intelligence to the scores, scales and volumes for next frontiers of evolution.

So, thumping your hearts and beating each other with, I'm a 'researcher', I'm a 'data analyst', we use 'scientific' methods from our grandfather's era types are obsolete mindsets. We do need sciences, scientific studies, research, AI, Gen AI and even more but not to the tune we are playing at the moment.

Anyone discounting human's intuition, imagination, creativity and consider this process as a non-standard are missing out big and already outside the big ARC coming up...

So, what can you do?

• Know that human is accountable for all AI's work too.
• Know that human ethics, morals, principles and philosophies drive the evolution and is still at the forefront and has to be so. AI is the perfect ally for humans, but not the master.
• Know that human intuition, thinking needs to be at best, not outsourced to AI, not underwhelming levels.
• Know that the other game changing methods to include human intelligence is on the horizon. Staying status-quo, 'we have always done it this way' is going to hurt you, your organization and all of us at large. Have some humility checks as it matters to your relationship with AI.
• All DATA is critical. Not just your data, my data, my database/ your database - this is amateurish. The DATA - that's cleansed in your mind, guarded with your heart and minds {your personal truth and data is vital to your existence and what you think, say, mean, do} And it compounds like Sigma summation and integral over all other collective individuals. This DATA is critical and needs to be talked and incorporated in methodical ways. Anyone who's discounting human intuition (it may or may not be ready to plug in, if you have not worked on cleansing the gut / self-improvement) but it will be the path to explore for collective evolution.

That's all for now. Hope you can read, pause, reflect, digest and make your next moves as you compete with your DATA based storytellers of this caliber.

Thoughts? Drop them in the comments, we'll explore.

I'll be glad to elaborate on the above perspective as it helps all of us.

About the Author:

I’m Veda Konduru, a former AI tech founder, data scientist, technology product architect with an academic excellence in science and technology with an overall 20+ years of subject domain career experience..

Inspired by some events in my life, I set myself off on a quest for exploring the role of natural intelligence, the human mind’s underpinnings, in the age of AI, and made significant strides in the past few years and I’m here to help others on a similar journey.

In short, An artificial intelligence architect NOW turned into The Mind Explorer.