Head of IBM Watson Says AI Will Augment Human Beings

PC Mag recently interviewed Rob High, IBM Watson's Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. Thanks to High's experience with Watson, IBM's artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer, he is one of the preeminent thinkers in the AI space. In his interview, High spoke about how technology, and AI in particular, is transforming jobs, culture, and life for humanity. For High, one of the biggest misconceptions the public holds about AI is the sort of dystopian worldview we see in Hollywood and, in some cases, from other thinkers in the field. He points out that AI is not replacing the human mind, but augmenting human intelligence and amplifying its reach: "[I]f you look at almost every other tool that has ever been created, our tools tend to be most valuable when they're amplifying us, when they're extending our reach, when they're increasing our strength, when they're allowing us to do things that we can't do by ourselves as human beings."