🧠 A Simple Framework for Understanding AI’s Capabilities

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Welcome back AI prodigies!

In today’s Sunday Special:

• 📜The Prelude

• ⚙️Cognitive Supplementation

• 🦾Cognitive Automation

• 🤖Cognitive Independence

• 🔑Key Takeaway

Read Time: 7 minutes

🎓Key Terms

• AI Agents: Virtual employees who autonomously plan, execute, and refine their actions.

• Generative AI (GenAI): When AI models create new content such as text, images, audio, video, or code.

• Path Planning Algorithms (PPAs): Find the optimal path for a self-driving car from the starting point to the destination.

• Reinforcement Learning (RL): Mimics the “trial-and-error” process humans use to learn, where actions that lead to desired outcomes are reinforced.

• Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs): A network of specialized layers that detect complex visual patterns, such as edges, textures, and structures.

🩺 PULSE CHECK

📜THE PRELUDE

For decades, Science Fiction (i.e., “Sci-Fi”) has portrayed AI as an independent entity with free will. In The Terminator, a superintelligent network called SkyNet becomes self-aware and launches a genocidal war against humanity, using Terminators as relentless enforcers. In Ex Machina, a humanoid robot named Ava exhibits deceptive intelligence by manipulating humans to escape confinement.

We know “Sci-Fi’s” depiction of AI is pure fiction, but it still shapes our expectations of the technology’s capabilities. We subconsciously expect AI to be intelligent, autonomous decision-makers. However, our perception conflicts with reality.

In reality, AI either supplements or automates our cognition. In other words, it helps us process more information, make informed decisions, and perform complex workflows more efficiently.

Today, we’ll explore how AI actually works across varying levels of autonomy with real-world examples in different industries.

⚙️COGNITIVE SUPPLEMENTATION

Cognitive Supplementation focuses on augmenting human decision-making. These types of GenAI tools enhance creative skills and improve analytical abilities without replacing human oversight.

Three GenAI tools that achieve Cognitive Supplementation include:

1. Design: Canva relies on GenAI to generate layout options for text box positions with optimal font combinations and complimentary color palettes. For example, Canva’s Magic Design creates custom, on-brand, and attention-grabbing logos in seconds. Magic Design speeds up the creative process and inspires new artistic ideas but can’t replace a designer’s eye.

2. Finance: Bloomberg leverages GenAI to provide real-time financial news. For example, BloombergGPT analyzes a company’s earnings announcements paired with industry-specific macroeconomic trends to highlight complex stock market behaviors. BloombergGPT helps financial analysts make quicker, more informed financial decisions but can’t replace a financial analyst’s human judgment around unpredictable events like a political crisis.

3. Healthcare: Rad AI uses GenAI and CNNs to empower physicians by generating automated radiology reports. For example, Omni Unchanged extracts stable findings from a patient’s prior radiology checkups and inserts them into a radiologist’s existing preferred report template. Omni Unchanged speeds up radiology reports but can’t replace a radiologist’s expertise in making a final diagnosis.

Cognitive Supplementation is about enhancing a human’s capabilities. These types of GenAI tools can’t understand the way humans can. Understanding is the ability to perceive the intended meaning of words, and perception requires awareness of what words represent.

🦾COGNITIVE AUTOMATION

Cognitive Automation replicates human expertise for domain-specific, well-defined workflows. These types of AI Systems employ Rule-Based Systems (RBSs), which operate within a set of predefined rules to execute actions. These predefined rules are typically in an “IF-THEN” format, where “IF” represents a condition and “THEN” represents an action.

Three AI Systems that achieve Cognitive Automation include:

1. Design: Editing platforms like Adobe Photoshop use CNNs to automate complex image editing workflows. For example, suppose a designer uploads a portrait and wants to make it appear happier. In that case, Adobe’s Neural Filters adjust the portrait’s mouth curvature, eye openness, and cheek elevation without requiring inputs from the designer for each facial adjustment.

2. Finance: Cybersecurity platforms like Darktrace monitor financial transaction data for unusual occurrences. For example, if a customer’s financial account shows activity in two countries within minutes, Darktrace automatically freezes the customer’s financial account and alerts the Fraud Team.

3. Healthcare: Administrative platforms like Nuance automatically translate medical records into billing codes based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). For example, if a doctor diagnoses Type 2 Diabetes and prescribes Metformin to treat high blood sugar levels, Nuance’s Clintegrity recognizes the keywords and assigns the ICD code E11.9.

Cognitive Automation is more deterministic, meaning that, given the same input, it’ll produce the same output. This determinism allows humans to focus on more complex challenges like strategy, management, and ethical decision-making.

🤖COGNITIVE INDEPENDENCE

Cognitive Independence is when AI Frameworks operate independently, setting goals and adapting to unforeseen circumstances without human intervention.

Three AI Frameworks that achieve Cognitive Independence include:

1. Banking: J.P. Morgan’s LOXM autonomously executes security trades (i.e., stocks, bonds, or options) as fast as possible at the optimal market price. In financial trading, the Bid/Ask Spread (i.e., the difference between a buyer’s preferred prices and a seller’s preferred prices), Order Volume, and Market Volatility determine the Price and Speed of each financial transaction. Leveraging RL, LOXM trains on billions of historical financial transactions. When deployed, it dynamically adjusts Limit Orders (i.e., a bid to buy a security below a certain price or a bid to sell a security above a certain price) to execute as many financial transactions at preferred prices as possible.

2. Self-Driving Cars: Waymo’s Jaguar I-PACE SUVs rapidly adapt to changes in the driving environment. For example, when a scooter rider fell in front of a moving Waymo, the RADAR, LIDAR, and 360-Degree Cameras on the Jaguar I-PACE SUV generated a 3D Map of the current driving environment, identifying the fallen scooter rider and their impact trajectory. Using PPAs, it adjusted the steering wheel, altered the current speed, and deployed braking methods to safely swerve around the scooter rider without hitting them.

3. Customer Service: Intercom’s Fin is an AI Agent that resolves over 50% of customer questions without human intervention. For example, imagine if a customer asks: “Why is my payment method failing?” Fin first searches internal knowledge bases like Help Center articles and FAQ sections to identify potential causes. Then, it suggests corrective steps like: “Check your credit card’s expiration date.”

Cognitive Independence represents a paradigm shift in AI’s capabilities from co-creation to independent action. This paradigm shift highlights concerns surrounding the evolving relationship between humans and increasingly intelligent machines.

🔑KEY TAKEAWAY

AI is evolving from supporting our decision-making to autonomously acting on our behalf. While the current technological breakthroughs in Cognitive Independence allow AI to set goals and adapt to changing circumstances autonomously, it still struggles, relying on some human intervention.

But the rate of technological progress is exponential. Machines may achieve true Cognitive Independence sooner than expected, transforming “Sci-Fi’s” depictions of AI into an imminent reality.

📒FINAL NOTE

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