Artificial and Human Intelligence: How You'll Make Better Decisions

Somewhere around 1973, I watched the movie, Westworld; a science fiction story set in 1983 (that was the future then), where a robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park. It was one of the earlier films dealing with the issue of where you draw the line between what is real and what is not, and what could possibly go wrong. In this case, one robot (played by Yul Brynner) becomes independent of the controls embedded in the technology, which turns out to be the equivalent of a virus that ultimate affects the entire robot population, and complete mayhem breaks out. If you watch any of the HBO series, a newer version of Westworld is now playing, expanding on the idea from the original movie, but taking it even further into the area of artificial intelligence by empowering the robots with an ability to understand, reason, learn, and engage with humans as though they too are human -- making it almost impossible to tell the difference. Let's jump into our reality and think about the prospect of a work-related version of Westworld, where computers armed with artificial intelligence or machine learning, take over the human role; because that's a real fear in the mind of many people, "when will they replace me with a computer?"