Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 17Augmented Intelligence: A Human Productivity and Performance Amplifier in Systems Engineering and Engineered Human–Machine Systems

Azad M. Madni

Astronautics, Aerospace, and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Introduction

Systems engineering today is in the midst of a transformation inspired by the need to increase scientific rigor of systems engineering, enhance system verification and validation testing, increase MBSE coverage of the system life cycle, decrease systems engineering cycle time, and enhance performance of engineered human–machine systems (Madni and Sievers 2018). The latter, which is concerned with augmented intelligence (AugI), is the focus of this chapter.

Artificial intelligence (AI), thus far, has been successfully used in both defense and commercial sectors as a replacement for humans in performing routine tasks. However, more recently, AI is being viewed as a partner or an aid to the human to enhance joint human–machine system performance. This view is integral to the concept of AugI and adaptive human–machine teaming (HMT). The current definition of AugI is that of an AI‐augmented human, where the augmentation consists of AI serving as a partner or assistant (Bird 2017). However, augmentation can and should be a two‐way proposition: AI‐augmented human, and human‐augmented AI. In other words, while AI can augment the capabilities of the human, the human can also augment the capabilities of AI. These ...