Lines blurring between humans and machines Companies need to look beyond simply replacing their human workforce with machines and computers if they are to benefit from emerging technology trends that are blurring the divide between humans and machines, say Gartner analysts. The Gartner "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2013" report published this week argues that emerging technologies including smart machines, cognitive computing and the "Internet of Things" are beginning to redefine the relationship between humans and machines, and that the divide between them will "no longer be clear cut." The report is designed to provide corporate strategists and planners with an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than 2,000 technologies, grouped into 98 areas, and highlight a set of technologies that "will have a broad impact across the enterprise." "In making the overriding theme of this year's Hype Cycle the evolving relationship between humans and machines, we encourage enterprises to look beyond the narrow perspective that only sees a future in which machines and computers replace humans," said Jackie Fenn, vice-president and Gartner fellow. In fact, by observing how emerging technologies are being used by early adopters, there are actually three main trends at work. These are augmenting humans with technology - for example, an employee with a wearable computing device; machines replacing humans - for example, a cognitive virtual assistant acting as an automated customer representative; and humans and machines working alongside each other - for example, a mobile robot working with a warehouse employee to move many boxes. Hung LeHong, research vice-president at Gartner, says: "Enterprises in the future will use a combination of these three trends to improve productivity, transform citizen and customer experience, and to seek competitive advantage. These three major trends are made possible by three areas that facilitate and support the relationship between human and machine. Technologies make it possible to augment human performance in physical, emotional and cognitive areas. The main benefit to enterprises in augmenting humans with technology is to create a more capable workforce. For example, consider if all employees had access to wearable technology that could answer any product or service question or pull up any enterprise data at will. The ability to improve productivity, sell better or serve customers better will increase significantly. "Enterprises interested in these technologies should look to bioacoustic sensing, quantified self, 3D bioprinting, brain-computer interface, human augmentation, speech-to-speech translation, neurobusiness, wearable user interfaces, augmented reality and gesture control," the report says. There are clear opportunities for machines to replace humans, for example for dangerous work, simpler yet expensive-to-perform tasks and repetitive tasks. The main benefit to having machines replace humans is improved productivity, less danger to humans and sometimes better quality work or responses. A highly capable virtual customer service agent could field the many straightforward questions from customers and replace much of the customer service agents" "volume" work - with the most up-to-date information. "Enterprises should look to some of these representative technologies for sources of innovation on how machines can take over human tasks: volumetric and holographic displays, autonomous vehicles, mobile robots and virtual assistants," says the report. But the report emphasises that "humans versus machines is not a binary decision, there are times when machines working alongside humans is a better choice," and points to a new generation of robots that is being built to work with humans as guides and helpers. For example, IBM's Watson does background research for doctors, just like a research assistant, to ensure they account for all the latest clinical, research and other information when making diagnoses or suggesting treatments. The main benefits of having machines working alongside humans are the ability to access the best of both worlds, says Gartner. That is, productivity and speed from machines, emotional intelligence and the ability to handle the unknown from humans. Technologies that represent and support this trend include autonomous vehicles, mobile robots, natural language question and answering, and virtual assistants. "In order for machines to better understand humans and the environment, they will need a better understanding of human context, humans and human emotion," says the report. This understanding in turn will lead to simple context-aware interactions between machines and humans such as displaying an operational report for the location closest to the user, better understanding customers by gauging consumer sentiment for a new product line by analysing Facebook postings, and complex dialogues with customers. Humans will also need a better understanding of machines. As machines get smarter and start automating more human tasks, humans will need to trust the machines and feel safe. The technologies that make up the "Internet of Things" will provide increased visibility into how machines are operating and the environment they are operating in. For example, IBM's Watson provides "confidence" scores for the answers it provides to humans while Baxter, a mobile robot, shows a confused facial expressions on its screen when it does not know what to do. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has also been working on Kismet, a robot that senses social cues from visual and auditory sensors, and responds with facial expressions that demonstrate understanding. "These types of technology are very important in allowing humans and machines to work together," says the report. Finally, the report's authors note that both machines and humans are becoming smarter. They argue that the surge in big data, analytics and cognitive computing approaches will provide decision support and automation to humans, and awareness and intelligence to machines. Natural language question and answering technology can improve a virtual customer service representative (or Chatbot,) or be used by doctors to research huge amounts of medical journals and clinical tests to help diagnose an ailment or choose a suitable treatment plan. The report adds: "these supporting technologies are foundational for both humans and machines as we move forward to a digital future."