009: Is AI Impacting or Augmenting Your Decision Making?

Read Time: 10 Minutes
Read on: monicatalkscyber.com
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Last week, Bloomberg reported, OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion in funds at a whopping $157 billion valuation. In one of my previous CISO roles, I was having a conversation with the CEO on how we wanted to get more involved with AI. The CEO asked me if I would be open to owning and leading the AI transformation in my role as a CISO. I asked them, “What is our strategy and what are the specific use cases we are targeting?” The room went silent.

Most companies are impressed by the idea of AI everywhere. But, they don't know how to use it. Learning AI today is no longer just about “learning” AI.

It is more important to know how to leverage it. Today, I'll show you one key AI use case that is fundamental to humanity. It will change how you think, work, and run businesses, and help you 10x your career and life on your terms. This one use case is fundamental to every company, every industry, and every market. No matter your role, your business, your industry, I bet you this one use case will impact you like nothing else. If you can learn to leverage it, you’ll flourish. If not, be ready to get "pushed over" by some McKenzie consultants. They'll walk in with some AI-powered presentation claiming to take over your role.

Let’s dig in.

There is no doubt that AI is changing the world. AI is changing fields like marketing, R&D, and cybersecurity. It is also changing industries such as finance and healthcare. These changes are crucial. But there is one key shift within AI that only a few are leveraging. That is: AI in Decision-Making.

What Makes You and Me Human and “Intelligent”

Here we are, after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. You and I, who belong to this amazing species called humans. We share many traits as humans. But one of these traits is fundamental to human survival and our dominance. Decision making. To decide is human.

Decision-making is a key human trait. Humans can decide using complex processes. These include reasoning, judgment, intuition, and emotional intelligence. That’s what makes us truly intelligent.

Every time I think of smart professionals like you, who are making effective decisions on a day-to-day basis and building incredible things for society, I am reminded of this quote from Albert Einstein:

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. – Albert Einstein

Imagination can create innovation beyond limits. That’s what we are doing with innovation. That's what we are doing with AI. Let’s look at what makes AI in decision-making so core and foundational to all other use cases:

1. Fundamentals: AI-driven decision-making is a key AI capability. It underpins many other AI apps and use cases. Most AI systems, at some level, make decisions based, based on data and algorithms trained on that data.

2. Broad Applicability: Decision-making is relevant across all domains and across society. An average adult human makes around 35,000 decisions per day. As AI is applied in many fields, its use in decision-making is expanding. AI decision-making is being used in healthcare diagnostics, financial trading, autonomous vehicles, and more.

3. Building Block: Many complex AI systems are chains of smaller decision-making processes. For example, a self-driving car makes many decisions per minute. It decides on speed, direction, and safety based on sensor inputs.

4. Scalability: As AI systems improve, their decisions will enable complex, nuanced applications.

5. Human Interaction: While some AI is augmenting human decision making, others are potentially replacing it. We will look at some examples below. AI in decision making will change how humans interact.

AI is Changing Human Decision-Making at a Rapid Speed

It's no surprise that AI is being used more every day for decision-making. It is a use case that transcends all industry boundaries. It is fundamental to humanity. It influences a key human trait: decision-making.

AI in decision-making is a fundamental shift that is changing the way you think, work, and build.

Since I realised this, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

This is not theory. This is happening in many forms, which we will look at below. This is only going to get deeper moving forward.

As a professional and a leader, how well you lead will depend on how well you can leverage AI in decision-making.

I talked briefly about this last year in my keynote at Grand Cayman. In May, I got another chance to give a keynote on AI and go deeper into the subject of AI in decision-making. In my talk, I shared the implications of AI in decision-making and its potential for humanity. The keynote video will be on my YouTube channel soon (subscribe to watch it when it goes live). I didn't want to keep you waiting. So here goes…

AI is augmenting and, in certain cases, even replacing the way you think, decide, and do things. AI-augmented decision-making is one of the most powerful use cases of AI.

How AI is Making a Fundamental Shift

Decision-making and actions based on it can greatly impact businesses and society. We are seeing use cases across the spectrum i.e. from AI helping humans to decide, to AI deciding itself on behalf of the humans. AI is not only used to make decisions. In various cases, it then takes actions based on those decisions. Let’s look at some real examples:

1. AI is helping banks and the finance industry detect fraudulent transactions by analysing patterns in customer behaviour and making decisions to allow or block it from being executed. A study from KPMG showcased that AI-based fraud detection and prevention tools can reduce fraudulent transactions up to 25% in the short-term and 40% in the long-term.

2. AI is assisting healthcare professionals in diagnosing diseases by identifying subtle changes in medical images with up to 100% success rate. That is mind-blowing.

This study has demonstrated how AI is rapidly improving and learning, with the high accuracy directly attributable to improvements in AI training techniques and the quality of data used to train the AI. The latest version of the software has saved over 1,000 face-to-face consultations in the secondary care setting between April 2022 and January 2023, freeing up more time for patients that need urgent attention." – Dr Kashini Andrew, Lead Author, Specialist Registrar at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

3. AI is also helping to avoid supply chain disruptions. It can take the decision to reroute deliveries in case of congestion.

These are great examples of AI improving human decision-making. In some cases, it also decided to take appropriate actions based on those decisions.

But what about replacing and impacting decision-making? More and more decisions are being made by AI with little to sometimes no human intervention.

4. A great example of that is AI deciding to approve or reject your house loan, based on your profile as a customer, e.g., your financial profile such as credit score, your employment background, your debt-to-income ratio, your assets and liabilities, etc. If you are not happy with the result, in some cases, you can submit a claim to contest it, but that happens after the fact. The decision has already been made.

5. Use of AI in screening candidates is not new either. For example, an AI system decides whether a candidate will go through to the next round or not. The use of ML/AI in Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is becoming increasingly common.

In 2018, Amazon had to scrap its secret AI recruitment tool. It was based on biased data from the last 10 years. The tool taught itself that male candidates were preferred over women. It “hated” women. Even though it was scrapped, that has not stopped companies across the world from using ATS with some of the worst (and sometimes plain illogical) algorithms and data, causing mass rejection. I recently came across this story, where a manager within their own company got auto-rejected within one minute. If that really happened, gosh, I have no words.

AI in decision-making will revolutionise how humans operate. But here's a kicker: AI models lack empathy. That's the main problem. They are not ready to replace the complex decision-making that humans are capable of. That doesn't mean it won't happen. It means we must account for "stupid," sometimes deadly decisions. We must be ready to act, or counteract, faster.

On a side note, AI hasn't learned to mimic all human emotions. But it eventually will. That will also include AI’s ability to lie, among other human attributes. That’s a story for another time. But for now, AI can mimic enough emotions and can influence human behaviour.

How to 10x as a Leader in The AI-World

In a noisy world, your leadership will hinge on one thing. It is how well you can use AI to improve human decision-making to solve real-world problems. That will determine how best you will be able to leverage AI. No matter what your business case is, decision-making will be a foundational part of it in one way or another. But there is a caveat to it. AI is being used more in effective decision-making. It ranges from augmenting to nearly replacing humans. But, AI cannot yet replace judgment, intuition, or empathy.

AI notoriously fails to take into account key human factors, such as empathy, when going into real-life decision-making.

Another key aspect to consider is this: How can you know if your decision, and your actions based on it, were your own or influenced by AI? Add to that the following questions: Is that influence good? Is the net outcome positive Those who will make faster, more effective, and "better" decisions will thrive in this AI world. Better is key. Better needs to be defined. If AI is promoting you to make bad decisions, the net outcome will be negative and sometimes even life-threatening or irrevocable.

In a nutshell, AI will influence your decision-making, no doubt about it. The question is how you'll leverage AI to "influence" and 10x your day-to-day.

When AI Makes a Horrible Decision

What happens when (not if) AI makes a horrible decision? When AI makes decisions (from aiding to replacing humans), here are the top three questions you need to be asking:

1. How do you secure such an AI? And, how do you ensure it makes decisions correctly, accurately, ethically, and legally?

2. If such an incorrect decision is made, who is accountable and held liable?

3. Most AI systems, including those replacing human decisions, are black boxes. How do we understand what really happened? Why did it happen? What can be learnt from it for immediate update and action?

No, there is no need to disclose whether AI was used to make a decision that affects someone. But everyone, regardless of how a decision was made, should have the ability to challenge a decision and receive a re-evaluation. The question assumes that humans would make a more “fair” decision than AI, which could very well be a faulty assumption. – In a response by The Wall Street Journal Readers

I beg to disagree with the first statement. For a lot of cases, transparency will be key. For transparency, we must disclose if AI was used to make a decision. We must also say if AI made the decision and is acting on it. Today, we do not have that transparency.

In my upcoming editions, I will be talking more about Responsible AI, trends in AI, and more. Forward this to someone who may find it useful.

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–– Monica Verma

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