Synthesizing human and machine capabilit...

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have made tremendous advances in the last several years. Machines are now better than humans at many tasks - facial recognition, medical diagnosis, parole decisions, driving cars - and the list is rapidly growing. As these tasks are ceded to machines, it creates new opportunities for humans to think less like machines and more like … humans. Skills like the ability to empathize, the ability to leverage ambient information, and the ability to grasp broad context are tremendously valuable and in the purview of humans. As machine algorithms become ubiquitous it is these human capabilities that become a means of differentiation. With today’s access economy it is now possible to harness the unique abilities of humans into products and services. New software systems are emerging that distribute their workloads across varied processors - be they machine or human. This synthesis enables new capabilities that go far beyond what is possible using either one resource alone.