SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 — ARLINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Authors Sachin Mahajan and Rajnish Kasat characterize digital intelligence by the basic traits shown in Figure 1. They point to some inherent advantages of digital intelligence decision over human decision making -- the following five factors give the advantage to digital intelligence:

• Humans relearn from birth. Humans have the inherent disadvantage of having to learning everything from birth. As information explodes, it will become difficult to develop overall expertise. Rather, the focus will be on developing skills in limited domains.
• Slower human evolution cycle. Compared to the growth of storage and processing power, human evolution at its best is slow. Artificial intelligence-based engines can process information without the same resource crunch.
• Industry trends support digital decision making over human decisions. Trends such as social, mobility, digitization initiatives, interconnected systems, and the IoT/IoE are a few key trends that have started generating trillions of bytes of information every second and are supportive of a framework for artificial intelligence.
• Human forgetfulness. Humans’ inability to remember data elements over a period of time limits the variation in pattern recognition and therefore is inherently disadvantageous compared to an intelligence engine database that can retain data without an expiry date and use that efficiently to generate decision options.
• Human cultural diversity and experience. Cultural diversity and humans’ varied ways of thinking and responding may be our biggest strength. It may also turn out to be a weakness due to inherent variation in its applicability. Human intelligence relies on a distributed intelligence and experience system that may not be the best way to harness the power of collective intelligence and experience.

According to Majahan and Kasat, "The above factors may give digital intelligence an edge over human capabilities. But in order to retain the edge, sustain, and evolve, digital intelligence will need to undergo a continuous evolution cycle -- faster and better than any evolution cycle ever experienced by humans."

"Human society is currently sitting at the dawn of digital revolution led by the evolution of a new and intelligent species: digital intelligence. The real question we need to ask ourselves is are we confident of retaining the supremacy of human intelligence forever? Or is it about time we start making note of the newer intelligent species and make efforts to tame it while it is still in its infancy?"

* Excerpted from "The Rise of Digital Intelligence," () Cutter IT Journal Advisor