Prashanth Bhushan is a distinguished thought leader in Engineering and the Internet of Things (IoT), with over 25 years of experience driving innovation and transformation across global industries. Throughout his career, Prashanth has held pivotal leadership roles, including Assistant Vice President of IoT Business at Cognizant, and has made impactful contributions at Symphony Teleca and Sasken Technologies. His work spans a broad spectrum of industries—Telecom, Technology, Utilities, Energy, and Consumer Packaged Goods—where he has delivered strategic insights and solutions in areas such as 5G network modernization, Enterprise IoT, Industry 4.0, and grid modernization. Prashanth is a expert speaker at industry forums and a regular contributor to thought leadership publications.
Establishing the Critical Role of Humans in an AI-Centric Environment
With AI becoming more ubiquitous—at the edge, in the cloud, and all around us—the industry is rushing into a mode of hyper automation, connecting and automating everything, perhaps leading to redefined terminology. Software Defined is now AI Defined, and Standalone Network is evolving into the Network of Everything.
But is this the complete picture? While the future of these technologies promises to connect everything and operate autonomously in an intelligent manner, we humans need to ensure we remain central to these systems. Whether operator, technician, welder or designer—we represent the Real Intelligence.
As clearly articulated in a 2022 Forbes article¹, Industry 5.0, while still relatively new, has been defined by the European Commission as placing the worker at the core of the production process, leveraging technologies while maintaining necessary boundaries.
Keeping the Human in the Digital
It’s easy to lose sight of the intricacies when building complex systems and their supporting infrastructure. We must deliberately keep humans at the center of systems and processes so we don’t lose control of the true purpose behind creating such dense and interconnected ecosystems in the first place.
A 2017 article by Bernard Marr² argued that the original purpose of building AI was to manage the 4Ds: Dangerous tasks, Dull activities, Dirty (or hazardous) materials and Difficult (massive data processing) tasks. However, we’ve now expanded far beyond these initial applications, developing use cases that leverage AI in increasingly sophisticated ways.
A purpose-built System of Systems is how an enterprise can leverage the best of AI while keeping humans central to the entire process. This requires thoughtful implementation and design.
A Three-Pronged Approach
In my view, safeguarding our primary objective—keeping humans at the center of AI and automation—requires a three-pronged approach:
1. Process Simplification
Existing processes should be simplified to achieve better end-user experience while avoiding elimination and fully autonomous systems that result in loss of control. These processes span multiple areas, including task management, training, knowledge management, review processes and documentation/approvals.
2. Cognitive Augmentation
Note the key word here: augmentation. Decision-making abilities should be enhanced with powerful real-time data analysis and supported by simple bots to navigate multiple systems. While tools may vary, the end result ensures that situational awareness and contextual understanding remain with humans, not machines.
For example, a Field Technician in utilities or telecommunications can be armed with the right dashboards, data analysis tools and backend support to fix network issues in real-time while maintaining human judgment.
3. Physical Collaboration
Assistant robots, AR-powered headgear and wearables, and other augmented equipment can work alongside humans, aiding in information retrieval or handling hazardous situations (such as using exoskeletons). These technologies complement rather than replace human capabilities.
To conclude, this journey and the debates around AI integration have only just begun. Recent legislative actions, such as the defeat of proposed AI moratoriums at state levels, demonstrate how divided our society remains regarding AI implementation. Ethical governance of systems and usage, bias management, and accountability need to be established uniformly at all levels.
In this context, profits cannot come before purpose. We humans must ensure that the Operator transforms into an Orchestrator within the enterprise, rather than eliminating the function altogether. By maintaining this human-centered approach, we can harness AI’s benefits while preserving the irreplaceable value of human insight, creativity and judgment.
References
¹ “What Is Industry 5.0 And How It Will Radically Change Your Business Strategy?” Forbes, 2022.
² Marr, Bernard. “The 4 Ds Of Robotization: Dull, Dirty, Dangerous And Dear,” 2017.