Authentic Intuition: The Other AI.

Exploring the quiet power of intuition in an increasingly synthetic world.

Social media have become the place to be for sharing neologisms and coining innovative terms. Let me introduce another AI. Powered by human technology.

Authentic Intuition. Analog Intelligence was a close contender. Too close to Artificial Intelligence, though. Not good enough to draw attention.

Jokes aside, this post explores the importance of emotions in an increasingly emotionless world. Artificial Intelligence systems may or may not feel anything –I will not entertain this fascinating debate– but it is clear to me that AI will soon be able to generate emotions. In fact, it is already the case: art amateurs are moved by AI-generated creations. Entertainment is next.

Here is what truly matters: at that pace, are we, humans, still going to be able to generate emotional bonds?

It is not only a philosophical question, but also one with tangible implications. The answer may well shape the future of trade relationships. We often dress business decisions in rational language: most companies nowadays aim to be “data-driven.” Pop the hood of any business decision, and you’ll likely find emotion playing a quiet yet powerful role.

• If it is about winning a business contract, the authentic intuition of the buyer was struck by the right communication scheme of the seller: right time, right words, right tone. Price may have played a role, but some emotional transfer happened.

• If it is about solving a business disagreement, the authentic intuition of the conflicting parties was set in motion by their emotional intelligence. Some emotional agreement was generated in reaching a trade-off.

In both cases, technology helps. Millions of data points may have been transmitted to algorithms to assess each side’s position. Artificial Intelligence may even have chosen on its own how to go about its analysis. Nothing wrong with that.

But more importantly, humans closed the loop, and it led to building or recreating trust between two human sides.

Authentic Intuition –or your gut, your instinct– needs to be nurtured not as an act of desperation to stay present and relevant in our ever more technology-centred value chains, but because it elevates the quality of the decisions. We know we cannot outsmart machines on an increasing number of tasks, but we can give AI algorithms a human rhythm.

Are your emotions the same when they are machine-generated? More importantly, are you still generating emotions of your own?