Cognitive Intelligence Augmented by Artificial Intelligence

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The global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market size is expected to grow to USD 309.6 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 39.7%. Yves Mulkers recently interviewed Dalith Steiger, covering the state of artificial intelligence, why technology is not needed to have bad intentions, the diversity of music and… high heels!

Yves Mulkers: Hi, Dalith, welcome to the show. I picked up that you will be speaking at the World AI Conference. Maybe for our audience, can you introduce yourself – what you’re doing at SwissCognitive, and maybe something about your background?

Dalith Steiger-Gablinger: Thanks a lot. I feel privileged to be able to talk to you about our topic, AI. This is one of my passions. But first, an intro about myself, who I am in a nutshell.

I’m the co-founder of SwissCognitive, and also the Cognitive Valley Foundation. I’m a serial entrepreneur. Born in Israel, grew up in Switzerland and one of my goals is to “Switzerlize” the globe.

Besides my drive for cognitive technologies, I’m a loving mother of two young women, 18 and 20. I’m absolutely a family person, a passionate mountain biker and off-roader, and a big fan of high heel shoes. I know we’re going to come to that topic later on.

Yves Mulkers: Thank you. That’s a whole lot of stuff that keeps you going. In a general way, do you have some fun facts about yourself? I like to challenge most people when they come into the show.

I’ve got that question once when I started with McKinsey, it was, tell me the most embarrassing moment in your life? “Would I tell it, should I tell it?” These are the three fun facts I’d like to ask you, that you can share with the public.

Dalith Steiger-Gablinger: Absolutely. One, we just discussed that before. We sometimes struggle with basic infrastructure, connectivity, low batteries, whatsoever. I’m still taking notes by hand especially when I moderate.

I was in the middle of moderating a panel and I ran out of ink. I left the stage in panic and returned quite embarrassed.

Also, I don’t only have difficulties to remember names, what most or a lot of people also have, but I’m also blind to faces. What also quite some people have, but the combination doesn’t really help in my work.

I can literally start a conversation with someone without knowing who I have in front of me. This can really sometimes irritate the other person a lot.

My co-founder got used to it, so sometimes he jumps in saying, “I think you think this person is actually another person”. This can be also quite embarrassing.

Yves Mulkers: I find it funny that you bring this up, that you have a problem recognizing people. You are into artificial intelligence, which is one of your passions, but as well as cognitive intelligence.

How do you see the difference between artificial intelligence and cognitive intelligence?

Dalith Steiger-Gablinger: I’d rather talk about cognitive technology than AI, because for me, AI is absolutely misleading description. Because if we’re talking about artificial joints, organs, even plants, we always think it needs to be as neutral as possible.

This is the aim. But if we talk about artificial intelligence, we’re now talking about copying the human brain.

It’s about augmenting us, about making our lives easier, supporting us where we are weak in efficiency, in quality, in speed, in all different ways.

For me, artificial intelligence is misleading, so therefore I dislike this expression, and I’d rather talk about cognitive technologies.

Yves Mulkers: The cognitive part is more the augmentation with the technology, if I do understand you correct. We had a big discussion about artificial intelligence. It needs to be non-biased.

It’s pretty hard to create a non-biased artificial intelligence algorithm, because we feed it everything, that we know. We feed it through literature, we feed it with whatever it finds online.

If we don’t give it the full context, it’s pretty hard to create it non-biased. I always compare it in a certain way with us people. […]