Human Nature

Subjectivity and error are in human nature

Why should the employee do the work of the computer if the computer performs the same task automatically and reliably within milliseconds? It has always been known that people make mistakes. The tasks become more and more complex and often human intelligence is just not enough anymore. Man is too slow and can not handle several complex tasks at the same time. Furthermore, there are not enough human specialists. Writing an e-mail is not tricky, but if an employee has to write the same message several times a day and only changes some data, one or more errors will be incorporated into his work. The tedious task of the employee is also demotivated and deprived of his creative inspiration, and that can lead to burnout in the long run.

The subjectivity of man is another problem. Many environmental and cultural factors influence all of our behaviours, choices that we make. We often have no influence or can not realise that we are not objective. As Antonio Damasio claims, human consciousness subjects the reality we perceive to what affects our emotions, decisions, and actions. In his book “The Mystery of Consciousness” (year), Damasio recalls an example of a sick person suffering from a lack of short and long term memory. An experiment was carried out on this patient, and it was proved that, despite a lack of memory, his body could show, for example, by the hesitating response, that something unpleasant had happened to him. It was a completely unconscious action. When the patient was asked if he knew or remembered the person, he always said that he would see them for the first time. Very often, our behaviours are unconscious, so unlike machines, we can not be completely objective. The theory of Daniel Kahneman also confirms this. In his book, The Thinking Pit, he described two primary systems that people use to make decisions or make judgments. First, with a fast system – automatic and unconscious, and a free system – rational and aware. The quick system is about the sequential order that we do not need to think about. We can judge that someone is angry just by his facial expressions and behaviour; we do not require complex reasoning. Decisions made in this system are intuitive and often unconscious. The free system means making rational choices after some thought. In the case of free thinking, we must remember the various laws and principles that we need to justify. These systems overlap and complement each other. Moreover, both can lead to inappropriate behaviour towards a customer. This is not the case with preprogrammed machines whose behaviour and mindset we can control.

The future of AI

Despite the advanced learning processes of information systems, it is inevitable that artificial intelligence will never take over all human labour because it can only make decisions based on data or algorithms, and not based on imagination, consciousness, and free will. Machine learning enables computers to learn from the cases presented to them and solve problems autonomously. However, if complex neural networks are involved and the computer takes into account many threads, the results it delivers, while correct, will not provide a simple justification. John Searle defined the idea of artificial intelligence as follows:
“According to strong artificial intelligence, a computer is not just a tool to study the mind, but a properly programmed computer is indeed a mind.” However, according to Antonio Damasio, we have no reason to be afraid of artificial intelligence, and we should make full use of his abilities. “I totally disagree that artificial intelligence can reproduce the human mind because it can not feel emotions.” – Antonio Damasio.