complementarity and augmentation

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“Automating labor ultimately unlocks less value than augmenting it to create something new.”

Erik Brynjolfsson

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“By ‘augmenting human intellect’ we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. We do not speak of isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations. We refer to a way of life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human ‘feel for a situation’ usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids.”

Douglas Engelbart, 1962

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When thinking about the future I encourage people to think along the lines of augmentation (maybe I am an augmentation futurist?). What I mean by that is I just don’t view most things that could happen in the future as ‘this or that’ or ‘this will replace that’, but rather view innovations and even what some people may deem as disruptive inventions as stepping stones of behavioral augmentation.

Now. Being an augmentation advocate is a tricky place to reside. Being an augmentation futurist means I help people think more strategically, creatively, and effectively about the future, yet, that future resides neither in 100% change or 100% non-change destinations, but somewhere in between. For example, in 2009 I created an online children’s education idea anchored by what I called “education missionaries” (teachers) who could travel anywhere – from remote villages to local libraries. I got hammered. I got hammered by edtech people, “online is an environment which the student facilitates their own learning” and the traditional education people (“classroom teaching is important for learning and sociological reasons”). Yeah. Hammered. Hammered despite the fact I was offering a pathway to, well, augmenting what existed so more children could learn.

Which leads me to quantum mechanics.**

“Quantum mechanics describes an utterly bizarre world, where nothing is certain and objects don’t have definite properties until you measure them. It’s a world where distant objects are connected in strange ways, where there are entire universes with different histories right next to our own, and where “virtual particles” pop in and out of existence in otherwise empty space.”

Chad Orzel

Tucked in quantum mechanics is the idea of complementarity: the idea that two different ways of regarding reality can both be true, but not at the same time, so in order to describe reality we must choose between the two because the internal validity and coherence of one would interfere with that of the other. Augmentation, in my mind, is owning the liminal space between two realities. In the business world I can guarantee in any given meeting both of those realities can be articulated, defended quite dogmatically and even measured, and, yet, neither truly represents the future. but they will be argued as certainty to be ignored at your own peril. Here is where I step in. Just as particles and waves offer complementary perspectives on the reality of light, augmentation offers complementary perspectives on the reality of whatever topic you are addressing. The other interesting aspect of complementarity is the idea that the collective output is greater than expected by simply adding up the individual parts/ability/output. This could be called synergy, but I will call it augmentation benefits which are either multiplicative or exponential in nature. How can I be sure of that? Complexity scientists have crafted a number of statistical models to assess different ways that individual parts can combine to create different collective outcomes, but that is a different topic for a different time. The point here is that augmentation is often the pathway to creating a synergy between existing parts to generate a more productive whole which can thrive in the future.

** note: The roles of synergistic interactions and complementarity are relevant beyond team performance to a wide range of issues – from our understanding of how drugs combine to treat disease, to how proteins function, to how monkeys manage conflict in their societies.

Which leads me to, well, AI.

The hottest topic in augmentation, or any futurism, is the role of AI and automation and who will become redundant and what tasks will no longer need a human. The consequences of an ever-improving technological world quickly slips into a complementarity discussion, i.e., two realities: it substitutes workers in particular tasks, decreasing demand in these jobs and it also complements them in others and increases demand for them in these jobs. The future of human work resides in the inbetween and, practically speaking, it is incredibly difficult to know now whether a technology will complement or substitute people. And this is where I slide into the conversation. Why try to identify it? Why not simply assess how to best augment people? I start here because all the wacky features of value creation are sensitive to the dynamics of the context and the market and the single best value creators in the world are, well, human beings, so just make them the best value creators possible. This kind of thinking becomes even more important if we begin to think about society. AI concentrates power and wealth. Left to its own devices, increasing returns of AI will go to smaller and smaller numbers of people, if not specific businesses. And where economic power gravitates, political power is not far behind. We cannot expect AI to stop this pattern, only humans can. And the only humans who can are a community of everyday people optimized through being augmented who decide to steer the swarm of wealth and power away from the few and toward the many.

Which leads me to augmentation.

I, personally, have proposed a business model using AI to prompt thinking and attempt to have personalized augmentation to make everyone attain their highest potential ***. There are a number of organizational technology tools being developed that could, if used well, augment the human organization. All that said. The future, in my mind, resides in augmentation. To be clear, if I am right, or wrong, it will be a loopy road getting to where we want to be. What I mean by that can be found in the numerous examples I speculated my way through in “who owns the future.” Basically what I suggest is business, and consequently society, doesn’t really have a good governor on its adoption engine and prioritizes efficiency over what is best for humanity so it is likely we will go overboard in some bad ways before we locate the optimal augmentation sweet spot. But, in the end, augmentation navigates complementarity. Like it or not the future is unwritten and the reality is there are multiple realities; even in the present. It seems fairly logical to me that effective augmentation is a way to thrive in a business world which will take on many characteristics of the quantum world: “an utterly bizarre world, where nothing is certain and objects don’t have definite properties until you measure them. It’s a world where distant objects are connected in strange ways.” Ponder.

“Augmentation is fundamentally a matter of organization.”

• ** I have most likely mangled quantum theory.

• *** An organization, no matter how far down any “digital transformation” (or any technology transformation) vector is, at the end of the day, is no more or no less than people serving people. Technology may enable this service in some form or fashion but, as I have said too many times to count, technology is nothing without people using it. Technology can enhance the Conceptual Age organization, it can enable a Conceptual Age organization, it can even augment human conceptual emergence, but, in the end, the conceptual age is about people doing things for other people. (source: McTague, The Conceptual Age Organization)