What kind of intelligence are we talking about when we talk about AI?

By DeepSee

There are numerous questions surrounding the field of artificial intelligence. Will it replace us in the workforce? Will it control our lives? And conversely, how can it help us in both domains? 

Many of us have accepted the benefits of AI in our daily lives and seldom give it another thought, but for business leaders looking to digitally transform their organization, every so-called intelligent solution in the marketplace presents the opportunity for great risk and great reward. To make the right decision they first need to know what artificial intelligence is and how it can specifically be applied to their business.

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) as coined by John McCarthy refers to the ability to mimic cognitive functions such as “problem solving” with explicit programming. 

Nils Nilsson went on to say that “artificial intelligence is that activity devoted to making machines intelligent, and intelligence is that quality that enables an entity to function appropriately and with foresight in its environment.” 

Whether it’s human-born or machine-generated, the ability to find patterns in complex situations is an essential aspect of intelligence. After all, one would not be able to “function appropriately” or “with foresight,” if it was unable to analyze information against certain parameters (context and environment), and extract meaning that produces a particular outcome or resulting action. But intelligence is so much more nuanced than mere pattern recognition. 

A recent Forbes article suggests that that’s precisely the problem with artificial intelligence (AI). It has nothing to do with ethics or utility, but our very human inability to agree on exactly what intelligence is in the first place. In fact, even the world’s brightest, and arguably most intelligent minds, landed on no less than 70 distinct definitions of the word.

Fortunately, most experts can distill intelligence down to three primary functions: the ability to learn from experience, recognize problems, and solve them. 

Ion Stoica, a computer scientist specializing in distributed systems, cloud computing and computer networking, wrote that “Signs of a mind are found in any system that makes decisions, learns from experience, and changes or extends its own structure and behavior in response to its environment.” In other words, intelligence is the ability to take an action in response to a given stimulus, and learning is the way we do it.

But to learn we must acquire, retain, and make use of knowledge. 

What, then, is knowledge?

For us at DeepSee, it’s the secret ingredient and differentiated approach that sets us apart from every other AI solution on the market.

Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, skills, and experience that enables a person, or entity, to accurately predict likely outcomes and make intelligent decisions. Knowledge is never complete. Learning, the process by which information becomes an outcome that is then analyzed for insight and applied to that process, improving it and creating more knowledge along the way.

Intelligence is nothing without knowledge, and knowledge is derived from humans. Any system that excludes subject matter experts from the process cannot acquire, retain, or make use of knowledge, and therefore cannot be called truly intelligent. 

This is why DeepSee’s knowledge process automation solution puts humans, not machines, at the center of every process. Unlike other automation tools architected by technologists who are disconnected from the everyday business problems their systems are meant to solve, our platform was designed for line of business users by subject matter experts who infuse every step of the process with the domain knowledge they acquired firsthand. Now, that’s intelligent design.

To speak with one of our subject matter experts about what DeepSee can do for you and your business, schedule a demo today.