Thoughts Brewing Blog

What are AI tools better at than humans?

Written by Damien Griffin | Sep 22, 2024 5:45:00 PM

This is a charged topic but we can still talk about it.


Whatever you call them - machines, computers, AI tools, etc. they are better at some things than we are.  


If you are worried about AI “taking your job” and your job consists of 100% of things on this list, you might be onto something.  Take the time now to broaden your skill-set.  Ironically you can use AI tools to do that.


Here are some things that I believe that AI tools do better than humans today -


Read/Scan information

  • You can use ChatGPT today and scan a 500-page document/book in less than 1 minute (probably less than 10 seconds).  I don’t care how fast you read, you aren’t going to go through something that fast.  Not even close


Recognize patterns

  • As good as the human brain is at recognizing patterns, we lose here, too.  It comes down to speed and accuracy.  Machines can just do this way faster.
  • This includes image recognition, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, etc.


Store data

  • The amount of memory (storage space, really) available to AI tools easily surpasses even the best human minds.


Recall data

  • Besides storing more data, machines can retrieve that data at lightning speed.  And in massive quantities


Lack emotion

  • This is a weird one because it is a positive and a negative
  • On the positive side, AI tools can make decisions based purely on data and logic.  There is no influence from emotions (i.e., fear, insecurity, etc.)
  • (The negative side for machines will be in the next post)


Lack biological limitations

  • Computers don’t have the physical and cognitive issues that humans have (including limitations, deficiencies, decline, etc.)
  • And they don’t get tired (they can overheat, though, but that’s not the same)


Learn from data

  • This goes hand in hand with reading information quickly.  AI tools can “learn” from all that information at the same rate.
  • We can’t compete (at least not in the same way).


All is not lost.  I’ll talk about what I think that we do better in the next post.  Stay tuned.