Start-up founder: “It will give them insights.”
The top prize in sailing is the America’s Cup. Today the race is as much about technology as about the skills of the crew. Millions of dollars go into boat design. Since the physics of wind, water, and ships are well understood, competitors use simulators to identify the most effective designs and to test boats without actually building them. The team with the best simulator gains a big advantage, as Emirates Team New Zealand discovered in 2017, when it won the cup.
Why was this use of AI so novel? Setting aside the impressive technology that allowed for simulations in complex environments, the key impact was at the system level. The AI wasn’t handing Emirates Team New Zealand some insights. Instead, it was being built into a system of decision-making. Translation software, an early application of AI, is a good example. It predicts how people would translate a given text from one language to another on the basis of how real humans have translated previous texts. AI classifying medical images, another early application, predicted what expert radiologists would say that scans showed. Both applications leverage the wisdom of the crowd, which can often make far more accurate predictions than one person can.
And that’s the real lesson from the America’s Cup. Emirates Team New Zealand didn’t take the people out of the process. Yes, it is possible to imagine a fully automated solution that makes every decision. But that approach is surely a rarity. AI prediction provides information that improves decisions, which are made by people. Interestingly, with AI the difference is not so much whether machines do more but who the best people to make decisions are.It’s curtains for the taxi industry.
The platforms and their AI had two important effects. First, vastly more people could now be involved in making decisions about rides, and second, drivers’ control over decisions decreased. Because the ride-share platform could match drivers and passengers and identify the best routes, all the drivers had to do was focus on providing comfortable and pleasant rides that satisfied the customers assigned to them.
Great article.
The Metaverse is where I'm headed. It's going to be more satisfying the science and the constant hacking. At least I've been told about the challenges I'm facing. Smiles
A veces es a mediano y largo plazo que uno sabe si una desición que tomó fue buena o mala. Les recomiendo ver la película EL EFECTO MARIPOSA y analizar el concepto científico en el que se inspiró el argumento de esta película.
Does it have no value if it makes faster decisions even if they are only as good as human decision making? What if AI is only just as good and just as fast as humans, but frees up humans to do more productive work or have more leisure? Isn't that valuable?