Cognitive collaboration

We have a new report out on DU Press –  Cognitive Collaboration: Why humans and computers think better together – where C4tE (along with a couple of coauthors) wades into the “will AI destroy the future or create utopia” debate.

The report’s big point is that AI doesn’t replicate human intelligence, it replicates specific human behaviours, and the mechanisms behind these behaviours are different to those behind their human equivalents. It’s in these differences that opportunity lies, as there’s evidence that machine and human intelligence are complimentary, rather than incompletion. As we say in the report “humans and machines are [both] better together”. The poster child for this is freestyle chess.

Eight years later [after Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in 1997], it became clear that the story is considerably more interesting than “machine vanquishes man.” A competition called “freestyle chess” was held, allowing any combination of human and computer chess players to compete. The competition resulted in an upset victory that Kasparov later reflected upon:



So rather than thinking of AI as our enemy, we should think of it as supporting us in our failings.

We’re pretty happy with the report – so happy that we’re already working on a follow on – so wander over to DU Press and check it out.