AI vs. Humans: Upending the Division of Labor

Despite transitional growing pains, the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) in innovation and decision-making offers a future with better decisions made at the command of but not by humans. That's what Pradeep Dubey, director of the Parallel Computing Laboratory at Intel, told attendees of a plenary talk at the PEARC18 conference in Pittsburgh, Pa., on July 25. "Humans and machines have had this very nice separation of labor," Dubey said. "Humans make decisions; machines crunch numbers … but humans are terrible decision makers." The annual Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) conference--with the theme Seamless Creativity--stresses key objectives for those who manage, develop and use advanced research computing throughout the U.S. and the world. This year's program offered tutorials, plenary and contributed talks, workshops, panels, poster sessions and a visualization showcase.