Artificial intelligence (AI) must be designed to incorporate and balance human oversight, ownership, and accountability for decisions throughout the AI lifecycle. IBM's first principle of trust and transparency states that the purpose of AI is to augment human intelligence. Augmented Human Intelligence The use of AI is meant to enhance human intelligence, rather than operate independently from it or replacing it. All this means that AI systems should not be treated as humans, but rather seen as support mechanisms that can enhance human intelligence and potential.
AI augments human intelligence, but maintains human responsibility for decision-making even when supported by AI systems. Therefore, humans need to upskill, but not downskill, by interacting with AI systems. Supporting inclusive and equitable access to AI technology and comprehensive workforce training and potential upskilling further strengthens IBM's Trusted AI pillar tenets, enabling participation in an AI-driven economy underpinned by fairness, transparency, explainability, robustness, and privacy.
To put the principles of augmenting human intelligence into practice, we recommend the following best practices:
- AI is used to augment human intelligence, rather than operating independently from or replacing human intelligence.
- In a human-AI interaction, inform the person you are interacting with that they are an AI system, not a human.
- Design human-AI interactions to be balanced, including human oversight throughout the AI lifecycle, addressing bias and promoting human accountability and ownership over outcomes from AI systems.
- Develop policies and practices to promote inclusive and equitable access to AI technologies and enable a broad range of individuals to participate in the AI-driven economy.
- Provide comprehensive employee training and reskilling programs to foster a diverse workforce that can adapt to the use of AI and share the benefits of AI-driven innovation. Work with HR to expand each employee's scope of work.
For more information on standards and regulatory perspectives on human oversight, research, tuning of AI decisions, sample use cases, and key performance indicators, see “POVs and KPIs for Augmenting Human Intelligence” below.
Explore perspectives for expanding human intelligence Explore KPIs for expanding human intelligence
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