The Smart Nonprofit

CHAPTER 4Staying Human-Centered

INTRODUCTION

Cesar Chavez said, “It was never about grapes or lettuce and always about people.”¹ The same holds true for smart tech. It is not about the code or the wizardry; it's about ensuring that people matter the most. Being human-centered means prioritizing the interests, strengths, and unique talents of people over the speed and wizardry of the technology. Valuing humans has never been more important as our workplaces become more and more automated.

Smart tech is a fundamentally new way of working and has the potential to do more harm than good if treating people well inside and outside isn't the top priority. This chapter explores the differences between human and machine intelligence, describes how to marry people and bots inside of organizations, and outlines steps for designing human-centered efforts to ensure smart tech is enhancing and not subjugating the needs of people.

MAN VS. MACHINE

Since the 1950s experts have been forecasting that smart tech will reach human-level intelligence in 20 years. “In other words, it's been 20 years away for 60 years,” according to MIT Professor Thomas Malone.²

Over the past few years, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and many other big names in science and technology have expressed concerns in the media about the potential for AI to be smarter than humans. There have been a number of surveys asking when this will happen and they all reach the same conclusion: we simply don't ...