Review: Human + Machine – Reimagining work in the age of AI

Written by Accenture Research and published by Harvard Business Review Press, I picked up this book because of the numerous glowing testimonials from leaders of several AI-trailblazing companies such as Benioff, Nadella, Kenny, McMillon, Huffington, and Levie. The book broadly covers the “current state of AI” with use case references across multiple industries and global companies with applications in factory floors, back-office operations, R&D, and Marketing & Sales.

Three key concepts:

• Classifies some tasks that can be performed only by humans (those that depend on activities such as Lead, Empathize, Create or Judge) and other tasks that can be more effectively performed by machines where repetition, replication and redundancy rule (those that depend on activities such as Transact, Iterate, Predict and Adapt). However, there is a set of activities where humans and machines can collaborate as symbiotic partners that form hybrid activities. Here either humans can complement machines with activities such as Train, Explain and Sustain AI or machines give humans superpowers with activities such as Amplify, Interact and Embody. The book walks through several examples to explain these activities and how these may evolve with time.
• Identifies eight new fusion skills as the future of work evolves with man/machine collaboration such as intelligent interrogation (how to extract answers from an AI agent across levels of abstraction), reciprocal apprenticing (how to teach AI agents new skills while also undergoing on-the-job training to work well within an AI enhanced process), rehumanizing time (how to increase time for distinctly human tasks such as creativity, interpersonal interactions, decision making, etc. by reimagining business processes).
• Proposes a MELDS framework with principles around the Mindset, Experimentation, Leadership, Data and Skills for organizations to adopt when incorporating AI in business.