Why AI can't replace shared intelligence

During my holiday, I couldn't help myself and kept reading stuff like news or articles I'd long postponed, and managing email. I even had a conversation about AI with an older neighbour, which was quite fun.

At the same time, I was navigating the politics of family and friends when you're an immigrant visiting home, which is to say you need to ensure everyone needs to feel visited enough. It's a tricky balance.

What's common between these two things is that there is the rational side of the argument, and then there's the lived experience of the argument in practice, with all its quirks. Logic can only get us so far.

Sure, AI can replace a lot of a strategic process, but the feeling of mutual conspiracy between client and consultant around getting to an answer they can both defend is priceless. Similarly, you may have the perfect solution for a family drama, but what really matters is that the people involved have enough headspace to actually commit to it.

In this sense, intelligence is less of an individual thing, and more of a shared thing. And I feel like this a part of the discourse around AI and human cognition that seems to be missing. Intelligence, just like meaning, happens between people's heads, not just inside them.

Individually, rationally, 'benefit optimisation'-ly (it's now a thing), there's so much AI can do, and so much advice we can give to alleviate someone's psychological pain. And yet, the social nature of how we live is far too messy for a tidy set of solutions to resolve.

The sell-in of anything (and family drama is often about selling new versions of a past, future, or both) is as important as what the thing is. Just try to convince your parents that 'zero sugar' yogurt actually has other sugar-y things in it, or relatives should openly talk about grief and come to terms with the fact that there's no 'right' way to do it.

As with family things, so too with work things. Individual intelligence is one part of the dance, but it rarely goes anywhere if it only ever lives inside someone's mind. The real value comes from the sense of shared intelligence between us, and the decisions that helps unlock.