Why should Complex AI decide for you
[Music]
i remember a sunny day when i was 14
my parents called me to get ready as we
were going on a regular car trip
and as i was a teenager i pushed to be
in the front seat
because i wanted to be cool so my mom
and grandma sat down on a back seat
i remember as we got into the hallway
listening to some music
we were happy singing along
what happened next changed my life
our car was hit and i remember the time
was frozen for me
as i was in shock the car started
rotating on the road
when the car stopped i could get out or
i could not see my mom and grandma
i understood that they have been thrown
out during the rotation from the window
i started shouting for help
unfortunately my grandma died due to
that accident and my mom was
hospitalized for around two years
i asked myself oh for what why
i wanted to blame someone was it the
driver was it the car safety
who was to blame it was all because of
human decision making error of a random
person
on a highway
why did i share my personal story with
you it’s because this is only one case
out of millions of accidents every year
and behind
every number is a real person like you
every year the lives of approximately
1.3 million people
are cut short as a result of car
accidents due to our poor judgment and
decision making error
in complex situations such as driving
put yourself into the driver’s shoes you
are under pressure to make complex
decision
now and there might be millions of
different options
with different trade-offs think about
the consequences
are you able to make the optimal
decision
the answer is no our brains are not
machines
it cannot calculate all the scenarios to
find the best decision
that’s why you need to use the right
tool for the right job
stephen hawking in 2000 said that this
century would be the century of
complexity
i have said the world complex a few
times by now
what does complex mean
well complex doesn’t mean complicated it
means that there are many many
interrelated independent parts
interacting
like a car in other cars on the roads
and you
and other people in a society all this
relationship can be both
in order and random with high level of
uncertainty
from the point of big bang to present
the universe has become
ever more complex from a super particles
now we have galaxies solar systems
ecosystems
and us living complex beings in a
complex
environment businesses
societies our immune systems and the
internet
can be thought of as complex adaptive
systems
each of these systems evolves in
relation to the larger environment
in that it operates the system as a
whole must adapt to change in order to
survive
as brilliantly heraclitus a greek
philosopher said
change is the only constant in life
the challenges confronting us today and
those that we will encounter in the
future
demand new ways of thinking about and
understanding the complex rapidly
changing and
interconnected world in which we work
live
and make daily decisions
complexity gives us a new way look at
the world
it’s a paradigm it’s a new way of
thinking
let’s get into complexity of your
decision making
it’s estimated you make about 35 000
conscious decisions each day you make
about
227 decisions on food alone
each decision of course carries
inevitable consequences
that are both good and bad
as level of your responsibility
increases in life
so does the number of the choices you
are faced with
many of these decisions big or small are
not optimized for your preferences
and goals and hence you might regret
them
which may have negative compounding
effects on other decisions
you make in your life
some of your decisions are extremely
important
yet complex such as what jobs or career
choices
you will pursue or if you did why did
you
why that one after all one third of your
life
has been at work there are millions of
different jobs out there
are you sure the job that you have is
the absolute match for you based on your
personal goals your skill set education
future stability and many more variables
that might be conflicting with each
other
is there a better match out there for
you
most probably there is but again your
brain is not made to calculate
all the trade-offs in millions of
different scenarios to find the right
job for you
i believe all of your decisions should
be set and optimized to push you towards
your personal goals to ultimately make
you happy
let’s say you want to buy a bottle of
wine you walk into a wine shop or
grocery store
observe the selection more often than
not you’re met with
oil up enough eye of hundreds if not
thousands of bottles
how does that make you feel are you
overwhelmed
if you’re not an expert probably yes
certainly i would be
like this guy that is called
choice overload it was first defined in
1970s by alvin toffler
he stated that it occurs when the
advantage of diversity
are cancelled by complexity of buyer’s
decision making process
when confronted with too many choices
especially under a time constraint
many people prefer to make no choice at
all
even if making a choice would lead to a
better outcome
choice overload makes you feel more
under pressure
confused dissatisfied and ultimately
increases your
unhappiness even if your choice is good
you regret it as you think that you
didn’t make the right one
hopefully not your spouse more choices
equals more complexity
but what are other ways to deal with all
of these complex
decisions some may say let’s make ai do
it
but what is ai there are many different
definitions of ai which is short for
artificial
intelligence and many firms use them
by their needs to impose that they are
ai enabled however
we will refer to the oxford dictionary
which defines ais
the development and you off computer
systems
able to undertake tasks regularly in
needs of human intelligence
such as pattern recognition visual
perception
and of course decision-making
however joel lemon and his colleagues
define ai
as an anarchy of methods and i agree
with them
it’s not just machine learning or deep
neural network as you may have
heard of it is way faster than that
and also includes optimization and many
others
the field of ai is in states of turmoil
there a massive amount of progress has
been made almost none at all
although we are super close to obtain
true ai where it is centuries away
ai will solve all of our issues or put
us all out of our jobs
destroy the human race or strengthen our
humanity
it’s a noble quest of summoning the
demons as
elon musk said however
let’s get back to reality almost all of
the ai solutions you use
currently from your netflix to find the
next movie to watch
to your smart speaker like alexa are
under an umbrella called
narrow ai meaning that they are really
good only on one thing
the ai that you see in the movies are
far far away
from where we are and when ai achieves
our level of intelligence
it is called general ai
some people are concerned about ai
assisted decision making due to the
opacity of those decisions
it’s not really clear how those
decisions
are made are they biased are they not
how they are optimized to be fair in the
face of diversity
and another concern is that the fact
that most real-world problems
involve more than one objective and
dimension
which needs to be taken account by ai
for decision making
it’s like if you want to buy a fast car
your single objective is a speed you end
up with a fast car
but it has poor ride comfort poor
handling
it is expensive inefficient and unsafe
you should take other five objectives
into account and find the optimal option
for you
so now you know what is complex and what
is ai
let’s put them together complex ai
you may say wait what what is complex ai
let’s say your personal decisions are
like you are holding a campus
and the narrow ai is like giving you a
map to understand
where you are but still there are many
ways for you to get to your destination
complex ai on the other hand is like gps
it will find the optimal route for you
to get to your destination
it is indeed the bridge between the
narrow ai today
and the junior year in the future
complex ai decisions
are traceable and auditable hence
eliminating the concern around the
opacity
complex ai mode is multi-objective and
solves the real world problem
more accurately with complex ai
you can make more logical decisions by
removing the human biases
and errors decision making not only gets
free from biases
but will also be faster and more
efficient
this is not a far-fetched future it can
be utilized today in complex
environments
like data centers on the clouds the
pinnacle of today’s
technological complexity but what is the
data center
that’s where the internet lives from the
moment
you open your phone or laptop to chat
with your friends
post photos on social media or watch
videos online like the one that you are
watching
almost everything you do on the internet
is connected to one or multiple
computers
stacked up in thousands in a warehouse
somewhere in the world
if you connect these data centers
together in a network
you have cloud technology
in the data centers there are way too
many variables to decide on
and the answer is not necessarily in the
middle
the obvious solution to one person is
not the obvious solution to another
in fact more than 70 percent of all data
center failures and incidents
are caused by human error and it can be
often traced back to poor decisions
by their management
but what is the solution here
complex ai can make sure that these
computers are optimally utilized
so you can indeed be able to do what is
very important online
like watching cat videos
we utilize complex ai in data rich
complex environments
such as data center and transportation
to solve complex issues for you
currently it is in its teething phase
but with technological advancement
we are and will produce even more data
around us
that would enable complex ai to provide
value to other areas
soon perhaps even to you and your own
decisions
and unprovenly technology is and has
been an ally
in the sense that the most appropriate
tool can take you further
to be better and improve
end of the day it is a tool and you
decide how to use it
i want you to imagine imagine the change
that
complex ai is bringing to your decisions
and to your life
just imagine for a second what is coming
you would be able to live an efficient
way and happier life
without regrets or bad decisions
every decision for individuals and
organizations will be optimized for them
based on what they want to achieve
and increase productivity to maximum
level for everyone
based on their path and prior decisions
and hopefully no other person would end
up in a fatal accident
in the near future as i was in the past
i would like to ask you what decision
have you made today
what decision in life do you regret
your decisions determine your destiny
so to overcome their regrets let’s get
some help
from complex ai thank you