Imagine a world in which you can use technology to connect to a system in which you can input the issue you’re dealing with and have exchanges about what you should do and why with the highest-rated thinkers in the world. We’ll soon be able to do this. Before too long, you will be able to tap the highest-quality thinking on nearly every issue you face and get the guidance of a computerized system that weighs different points of view. For example, you will be able to ask what lifestyle or career you should choose given what you’re like, or how to best interact with specific people based on what they’re like. These innovations will help people get out of their own heads and unlock an incredibly powerful form of collective thinking. We are doing this now and have found it way better than traditional thinking.
While this kind of view often leads to talk of artificial intelligence competing with human intelligence, in my opinion human and artificial intelligence are far more likely to work together because that will produce the best results. It’ll be decades, and maybe never, before the computer can replicate many of the things that the brain can do in terms of imagination, synthesis, and creativity. That’s because the brain comes genetically programmed with millions of years of abilities honed through evolution. The “science” of decision-making that underlies many computer systems remains much less valuable than the “art.” People still make the most important decisions better than computers do. To see this, you need look no further than at the kinds of people who are uniquely successful. Software developers, mathematicians, and game-theory modelers aren’t running away with all the rewards; it is the people who have the most common sense, imagination, and determination.
Only human intelligence can apply the interpretations that are required to provide computer models with appropriate input. For example, a computer can’t tell you how to weigh the value of the time you spend with your loved ones against the time you spend at work or the optimal mix of hours that will provide you with the best marginal utilities for each activity. Only you know what you value most, who you want to share your life with, what kind of environment you want to be in, and ultimately how to make the best choices to bring those things about. What’s more, so much of our thinking comes from the subconscious in ways we don’t understand, that thinking we can model it fully is as unlikely as an animal that has never experienced abstract thinking attempting to define and replicate it.
Yet at the same time, the brain cannot compete with the computer in many ways. Computers have much greater “determination” than any person, as they will work 24/7 for you. They can process vastly more information, and they can do it much faster, more reliably, and more objectively than you could ever hope to. They can bring millions of possibilities that you never thought of to your attention. Perhaps most important of all, they are immune to the biases and consensus-driven thinking of crowds; they don’t care if what they see is unpopular, and they never panic. During those terrible days after 9/11, when the whole country was being whipsawed by emotion, or the weeks between September 19 and October 10, 2008, when the Dow fell 3,600 points, there were times I felt like hugging our computers. They kept their cool no matter what.
This combination of man and machine is wonderful. The process of man’s mind working with technology is what elevates us, it’s what has taken us from an economy where most people dig in the dirt to today’s Information Age. It’s for that reason that people who have common sense, imagination, and determination, who know what they value and what they want, and who also use computers, math, and game theory, are the best decision-makers there are. At Bridgewater, we use our systems much as a driver uses a GPS in a car: not to substitute for our navigational abilities but to supplement them.
Be cautious about trusting AI without having deep understanding.
I worry about the dangers of AI in cases where users accept, or, worse, act upon, the cause-effect relationships presumed in algorithms produced by machine learning without understanding them deeply.
Before I explain why, I want to clarify my terms. “Artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” are words that are thrown around casually and often used as synonyms, even though they are quite different. I categorize what is going on in the world of computer-aided decision-making under three broad types: expert systems, mimicking, and data mining (these categories are mine and not the ones in common use in the technology world).