A Definitive Guide to Augmented Intelligence

AI & NLP

Most of us have heard of artificial intelligence, but what about augmented intelligence?

Augmented intelligence is not entirely different from artificial intelligence. Rather, think of it as a subcategory of artificial intelligence–the more human-oriented, customizable cousin to A.I. What else should you know about augmented intelligence? It’s changing the way we think about problem-solving and data analysis in industries that range from finance to healthcare to law…giving us more targeted insights, automating menial tasks, and helping us to do a better job at work.

Augmented Intelligence: A Definition

Augmented intelligence is a form of intelligence that complements, rather than replaces, human intelligence. With augmented intelligence, artificial intelligence takes an assistive role to enhance the capabilities and capacities of human intelligence. It’s basically a form of technology that allows human beings to continue taking the lead in decision-making while relying on artificial intelligence to automate tasks that can be done by machine learning.

What is Augmented Intelligence Used For?

While it’s trendy to brand technologies as being fueled by A.I., in many cases augmented intelligence actually produces better outcomes. That being said, here are several ways in which augmented intelligence is being used to improve insights, creative output, customer service, security, and more.

Data Analysis

Augmented intelligence can be used to perform advanced data analysis for a range of industries. For example, it might be used for fraud detection in the banking or finance industry; finance and accounting; preventative healthcare; or customer survey feedback.

In the example of fraud detection, systems can be wired to detect signs of fraud, which are delivered to employees who assess red flags and then make judgment calls. In fact, according to a 2016 study, the use of automated intelligence saves card issuers and banks $12 billion every year.

In finance and accounting, automated intelligence can be used to generate accurate reports that can then be customized and sorted out by an accountant for a given client. While A.I. has performed the hard labor of sifting through massive amounts of data, the accountant still uses skills of creative analysis and organization to deliver results.

Augmented intelligence may be used in the area of healthcare by applying artificial intelligence to a person’s DNA to identify potential health risks, and then relying on a doctor’s expertise and knowledge to make recommendations to the patient for preventing future illness.

As for customer feedback surveys, augmented intelligence can be applied to analyze large quantities of open-ended feedback to deliver business owners actionable insights into how their customers are responding to their product or service.

The result is an analysis that’s spot-on and actionable.

Creative Production

There are certain aspects of creativity that cannot be replicated by a machine–yet. But there are also certain types of productive tasks that can be performed by artificial intelligence, such as some kinds of technical writing and legal documentation like contract creation, divorce proceedings, and legal discovery. Humans still remain at the center of the decision-making process surrounding the text, but artificial intelligence produces copy based on certain algorithms.

Sales

Augmented intelligence helps sales teams make smarter decisions and increase productivity by using artificial intelligence to generate sales forecasts based on past deals. The result is that sales representatives are able to make wiser decisions about who to approach–dramatically reducing lost time and money on pushing sales that never close.

Ultimately, there is a potentially innumerable amount of applications and usages for augmented intelligence. As human beings continue to create and innovate using artificial intelligence, you can bet that augmented intelligence will take surprising new forms to make life easier and work better.

Augmented Intelligence for Business Owners

Regardless of which industry you work in, augmented intelligence applies to your business.

How?

One of the most powerful usages for augmented intelligence is for analyzing customer feedback and delivering actionable insights for business owners to improve customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and other metrics.

In other words, automated intelligence can help business owners and entrepreneurs to understand what their customers want, what makes them recommend their product to a friend or family member, and why customers remain loyal 🙂 (or lose interest 🙁 ).

While artificial intelligence can offer some help in this area, automated intelligence vastly improves on the exclusive use of artificial intelligence to analyze feedback. Analysis that is fully automated lacks interpretability…and in many cases, offers results that aren’t actionable. For example, artificial intelligence may identify patterns of keywords from feedback like “happy” and “like,” but it doesn’t provide in-depth insight that business owners can use to actually improve their product or service.

On the other hand, automated intelligence offers a superior solution to analyze open-ended feedback gathered in customer surveys. Augmented intelligence automates repetitive tasks (such as categorization of customer feedback and natural language processing), and relies on human intelligence to set up a system and set of categories that make sense for a given brand or company.

Caplena offers an augmented intelligence tool that’s able to analyze open-ended feedback at scale while allowing owners to identify specific metrics on which they want to focus. It keeps business owners at the center of the process by allowing them to define what it is they want to track, and what sort of specific insights they are looking for. It performs the “heavy lifting” aspect of analysis, while still offering detailed, actionable insights for business owners.

The result is that business owners reduce the effort of analysis by 35%-70%, and are able to implement feedback in order to improve their product or service and boost customer satisfaction.