Embracing collaborative intelligence to realize the benefits of new technologies
There is still a lot of unknown and for some, unease, around new technologies that have surfaced over the past decade or more. Automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, big data analytics, blockchain and other innovations can stir a range of different reactions.
Whatever your view, the potential impact on your industry cannot be underestimated. And the businesses that benefit most in the short term will be those who adapt, innovate, and realize that workplace collaboration must extend beyond the human race.
Why collaborative intelligence?
Bring up any new technology in conversation and you will usually provoke one of three responses.
Some dismiss it as a buzzword—unimportant, a passing fad, something that will fade into obscurity.
For others, it strikes fear—that jobs will be replaced, humans are at risk, even that it is our biggest existential threat.
While some respond in excitement—about how the world can be revolutionized, our lives made incredibly easier, the sheer potential for what might be possible.
None of these responses are unfounded, however, the undeniable fact is that right before us, we are seeing these new technologies transform entire industries. They are shifting the required skills for workers in those industries, the tasks that they carry out, and their entire job.
Our prediction, in the short to mid-term at least, is that this technology will continue to radically alter how work gets done and who does it. Its largest impact, however, will be how it complements and enhances what humans are capable of, not replacing them.
Humans and machines need to collaborate, because what comes naturally to one does not come naturally to the other. People for example, excel at skills that machines have not mastered such as leadership, teamwork, creativity, and social skills. Machines on other hand, are far more advanced at speed, scalability, and quantitative analysis.
Business requires both kinds of capabilities, and those who are benefitting the most from new technologies have realized this. Companies who invest in human and machine collaboration are able to create outcomes that are two to six times better than those that focus on machine or human alone.
BMW for example, found that teams consisting of humans and robots working together were about 85% more productive than their old assembly line process, where they worked on separate sides of the factory.
Meanwhile, Qantas expects to save $40 million a year thanks to a flight planning program built in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. The program takes into account wind patterns, varying altitudes, flight speeds and flight paths that would never occur to a human dispatcher to present the most efficient route. People still do the coordinating, but machines will equip them information to make better decisions.
G2.com
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