How can Human Beings and Artificial Intelligence work together?

Now that there is so much talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing humans in many jobs, which tasks are better done by human beings?

AI is a set of technologies that enables electronic devices to perform a variety of advanced functions, including the ability to see, understand, and translate spoken and written language, analyze data, make recommendations, and much more.

Currently, an electronic device can hold a conversation with a human, it can translate texts into any language, can write dictated texts, can recognize images, sounds, and voices of different people, etc. In the near future, it will probably be impossible to distinguish if it is a person or an electronic device who is performing an activity.

Therefore, many jobs such as film dubbing, customer service in call centers, and access control to spaces (buildings, parking, etc.) based on facial or image recognition, will disappear completely.

Something very similar already happened in the industrial revolution, when machines replaced many of the manual tasks. But as history demonstrates, this is not the end of human jobs, human beings are capable of adapting to a new reality. 

Even Though AI has advanced a lot, human beings can still perform many tasks that AI is currently incapable of providing, with the same added value as a human being. AI has not yet arrived at the same point of creativity and disruption that human beings can achieve. In these areas, people can still contribute.

Therefore, the great creative and disruptive ideas of people will continue to make a competitive difference between companies. Technology is a great ally and will help us develop our business ideas, such as Uber, Spotify, AirBnB, etc., speed up time to market, and other highly relevant variables, but the fundamental idea still comes from people.

Great ideas that touch the emotional fiber of people like the reinvention of the Dove brand in 2004 are currently only generated by people. This big idea was developed to challenge beauty standards and celebrate the variety of women's shapes, sizes, and skin tones. The "Real Beauty" campaign featured not professional models, but six real women whose physical appearance did not fit perfectly within the usual stereotypes of beauty, and had the following message: "We believe that true beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and ages. It's time to celebrate the beauty of real women." This advertising message, this great idea, sparked a highly profitable global conversation for the company. For now, these great ideas do not originate from conversations with a Chatbot.

Later, in 2006, Dove produced a short film, Evolution, which showed the transformation of a real woman into a supermodel, through digital photo retouching tools. In 2007, the third phase of Dove's advertising campaigns for Real Beauty was launched. The campaign celebrated the deepest essence of women over 50: wrinkles, age marks, or gray hair.

Thanks to all these ideas, Dove leads the world of "Beauty Branding".

A somewhat less emotional idea, but equally creative and disruptive, is the Basis Amsterdam (https://www.basisamsterdam.nl/ ), which is the new restaurant concept where you are the one who brings your food, homemade, commissioned, or from another establishment. They provide tables, cutlery, glasses, and even devices to heat your food. They only charge for what you drink. They also offer dishes that they have, but they also give you the possibility of placing your order at another establishment and they will take it there. To top it off, they offer to cook your food, you take what you want them to cook for you, and for a small price, they will do it.

In summary, Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool, but at the same time, businesses still need people with disruptive and entrepreneurial ideas that challenge the market. Ideas that can reach your potential customers and get to their most emotional fiber. Nowadays human beings still have this advantage over AI. We don't know how long it will last.

Antonio Naranjo
Chair of STEM