AI cannot replace human instinct in decision-making

It can act on data but lacks the situational awareness that guides humans to make good decisions

- ARVIND GUPTA & AAKASH GUGLANI

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has presented both unprecedented opportunities and complex challenges in the rapidly evolving landscape of decision-making. As AI advances, it is poised to revolutionize fields ranging from autonomous vehicles to corporate strategy and sports. However, amid the excitement surrounding AI's potential, it is crucial to recognize its current limitations and the enduring importance of human instinct and situational awareness.

One of the most visible arenas where the challenges of AI decision-making have come to the fore is the arena of self-driving cars. Despite billions of dollars of investment and years of development, even the most advanced autonomous vehicles today are prone to mistakes that human drivers would instinctively avoid. As leading AI researcher Missy Cummings points out, these issues stem from two primary factors: inadequate sensors and recognition technology, and a more fundamental lack of true "situational awareness" in AI systems as they exist today.

Human drivers can draw upon a vast reservoir of common-sense knowledge accumulated through experience over years and adaptively apply it to novel driving situations. We instinctively understand things like the likely behavior of pedestrians, the physics of traction on a wet road and the urgency implied by the flashing lights of an ambulance. In contrast, autonomous driving systems are essentially trying to learn all of this from scratch based on statistical patterns in their training data. They have no innate model of how the world works.