Essays on Collective Intelligence and the Future of Work

TitleEssays on Collective Intelligence and the Future of Work
Publication TypeThesis
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsDuhaime E.P.
Academic DepartmentManagement
DegreePhD
Date Published06/2019
UniversityMIT, Sloan School of Management
CityCambridge, MA
Thesis TypeDoctoral
Abstract

This dissertation considers how information technologies have enabled new ways of organizing work. The first essay investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) systems will impact the field of medical diagnostics.  While previous research has shown that AI can diagnose skin cancer as accurately as professional dermatologists, I explore what happens when AI is combined with—rather than compared to—human intelligence.  Using a dataset of the diagnoses of 1 state-of-the-art AI system and 21 board-certified dermatologists on 371 biopsy-proven cases of skin lesions, I find that averaging the opinion of an individual dermatologist with AI often does not lead to higher accuracy than AI alone.  However, combining AI with the average opinion from groups of dermatologists leads to higher performance than individuals alone, AI alone, and groups alone.  This suggests that in many cases artificial intelligence will not simply replace jobs, but rather, will transform how work is organized....