Will AI Displace Humans or Augment Human Capabilities

Rachna Maheshwari,

An Economist, Banker, Risk Manager

LinkedIn

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The question “Will AI displace humans or augment human capabilities?” encapsulates one of the most profound debates of our times.

It probes the essence of technological progress forcing us to both confront our worst fears and anxieties as well as to realize our aspirations associated with how we use AI.

While the possibility of widespread job displacement is being discussed widely a more nuanced and optimistic perspective is that AI’s greatest impact will be in augmenting human potential rather than rendering it obsolete.

The fear of displacement is understandable and specific examples exist. For instance, in manufacturing robotic arms powered by AI perform intricate assembly tasks, welding, and quality control.

AI powered chatbots address customer queries and resolve issues to satisfaction, thus reducing the need for direct employee-customer interaction.

Even in complex fields such as law, AI systems like JPMC’s Contract Intelligence (COiN) can review legal documents in seconds.

Draft equity research reports and credit reports containing financial analysis and ratios can be produced by Gen AI agents; thus, analysts are only required to augment such reports with unique economy, industry and company-specific macro-financial and risk perspectives.

However, focusing only on labour displacement overlooks the transformative power of augmentation, which is far more pervasive, less visible and productivity enhancing. AI can be a catalyst for amplifying human intelligence, creativity, efficiency and productivity.

For instance, in day-to-day working across verticals in my company AI tools such as Copilot and Gemini (based inhouse tools) are being used for

(i) creating, drafting and summarizing content,

(ii) plugins in MS Office (Excel, PPT, Word & Teams) that facilitate and perform excel based numerical analysis, create summaries, draft presentations, and meeting minutes,

(iii) AI plugins that assist in writing code and produce code snippets.

Similarly in other domains such as medicine AI tools such as IBM Watson for Oncology assist doctors by analysing vast amounts of patient data and relevant medical research to recommend personalized medical treatments.

In architecture and design AI powered generative design software allows architects to explore thousands of design permutations for a building’s structure or layout, optimizing for factors such as energy efficiency and building materials usage in minutes, a feat impossible for human designers.

For us to remain relevant, the key lies in identifying, exploring and mastering the ways in which AI can complement human intelligence and capabilities within ones’ own domain.

In addition, contemporary research identifies unique cognitive and non-cognitive human capabilities that will not only sustain but also significantly augment AI, including strengths like critical thinking, complex problem solving, abstract reasoning, creativity, ideation and innovation, emotional intelligence, adaptability and resilience, ethical judgement and moral reasoning.

These uniquely human attributes act as an essential rudder for AI’s immense power, ensuring that its further integration complements humans thus bringing about a technology augmented spike in growth, prosperity, well-being and happiness.