GUEST BLOG: Artificial or Human Intelligence: where do you place your trust?

In 2037, 20% of UK jobs will be automated. Even the late Stephen Hawking once wrote, “the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.” It’s predicted by 2045, we will see “full-human level AI”, and experts recommend that if companies want to boost their revenues by 38% within five years, they should invest in artificial intelligence (AI).

So, if AI is the future, where does that leave human intelligence?

So, what is AI?

Simply put, artificial intelligence is intelligence demonstrated by machines, or rather it is machines simulating natural intelligence and performing human-like tasks. Once programmed and trained, AI systems will display the main traits of human intelligent behaviours like learning, reasoning, planning, problem solving and decision making.

AI is also not just a thing of future, it’s being applied right now. You are likely using it on a daily basis without even realising. Your smartphone, your social media feed and online ads targeting you all use artificial intelligence to some degree or another. In the travel industry, that chatbot you’re communicating with, online booking tool and GPS tracker you are running are all fuelled by AI.

This doesn’t mean, however, that human intelligence doesn’t have a crucial part to play, especially when it comes to the verification and decision-making process in the travel risk and security sectors.

AI’s Strengths

Every day more than three million articles from traditional news media around the world are published and five million tweets are posted on Twitter. With such a magnitude of content, AI can help by reducing this firehose of information and allow us to concentrate on what’s important; real-time data (RTD) streams coupled with datamining technology are a valuable business asset, especially during a crisis when the time from information retrieval to an actionable plan must be kept to a minimum.

However, what if part of the initial information is incorrect? Can you trust AI to make decisions if it has delivered the wrong data?

The Value of Human Intelligence

Machines are only as intelligent as we programme them to be; location data can be tagged incorrectly, context lost from keyword extraction and fake news unaccounted for. In such cases, there is no substitution for human involvement to evaluate and verify the data received; experience plays a crucial role in this process, especially where lives are on the line. While AI filters noise, human intelligence is put to work to honour verifiable facts in order to deliver authentic, concise and relevant information.

Technology has not yet risen to a point where Duty of Care can be completely outsourced to a computer; when multiple outcomes to a situation need to be evaluated, the expertise of a skilled individual is still relevant to deliver trusted information to be better applied in the decision-making process.

While it’s true that AI has already begun to replace some jobs and will continue in the future to make some positions obsolete – especially those involving routine and time-consuming tasks – humans will remain a critical part of many business processes. Artificial intelligence certainly helps to make our job easier and day more productive, but it’s not about to eliminate the intellectual strengths of humans just yet.

This blog post was written by Suzanne Sangiovese, Senior Political & Security Risk Analyst, Riskline. Riskline is exhibiting at the Business Travel Show, which takes place at London Olympia from 20-21 February. You can register for a free visitor pass at https://www.businesstravelshow.com/register