Information and Communication Technology is Supporting People to Refine Knowledge Because a Safe Balance of Artificial and Human Intelligence Could Leverage the Search for the Right Tracks of World Evolution -Part 1-

The paper analyses the essence and the role of knowledge refining (KR) concept, we earlier promoted, in the new context of World incertitudes and crises, where the differences between words and reality became sometimes unmeasurable or lacking metrics (sometimes, “metaphors or icebergs†hiding fake/irresponsibility, instead of credible subtlety/inference), in spite of the technology advances, including AI, while HI, education and wisdom are facing unprecedented challenges of real Earth ecosystem, in a struggle which is still expected to find the ways to surviving, mitigating the aggressive factors with amazing speed and explosive consequences, first considering the global warming, Earth resources fading, irresponsible geopolitical actions, social unbalances or even the dangerous misuse of the technology. KR would be an approach where people need to be habituated with understanding the reality deeper and beyond appearances (like social media spots containing fake “metaphors or icebergs†), as traditional values of human honesty, transparency, right thinking and fair play are more and more neglected or even substituted by speed and force of chaotic/subjective actions almost everywhere on Earth. For such a crucial step, the ICT/AI role is essential, but only if keeping the rational balance with HI and the mentioned values, while human creative imagination and wisdom will be the key to this goal, by check, balance and action iterations. This balance should give priority, in the mentioned context, to the fight against emerging Earth ecosystem threats and also to the humankind existential needs, versus, for just an example, to entertainment/games or gadgets. Perhaps, we still have enough human talents and imagination for creating artistic works, so AI applications and (ro)bots should support first, among others, e-health, industry/economy efficiency, Earth resources use/discovery optimization or education processes all over the World, leveraging the appropriate KR. By some relevant examples, our analyses illustrated issues of the concrete content, potential and mechanisms of AI/HI balance, starting from the observation that KR, a term that we already pointed in previous papers, as human thinking goal, today could be seen often as generally linked with AI, focusing mainly on large amounts of data, in horizontal applications in industry, language or image recognition and fortunately on e-health, but less linked with World or humankind needs of searching for sustainable progress and survival new paradigms, where only HI performs, with rational approaches supported by all refined scientific, technological and human creation resources. This way, we analysed the need for AI-governance and updated rules/standards to the fast-changing ICT/AI and World context, as it is also expressed by some references. From these AI analyses results, we believe it is worth to observe the superficial level of utility/innovation versus safety for citizens/organizations and notice the crucial implications of “ethical AI†issues, but especially the tip of a huge (but credible) “iceberg†we have to be worried about, “a new global arms race†, as it is clear that, along with the global consequences of military conflicts (including hybrid war) and adding to prior geopolitical trends, all these premises could lead to new crises we have to mitigate, also by using the AI-HI balance support (“keeping humans in the loop†). Even with the desired AI/HI balance, continuing and deepening such analyses, it is possible to find, eventually, more challenges and dilemmas, but this is not a reason to give up. The essential contributions of human factor in AI-HI balance achievements, as moral value and a factor vital to the success, also resulted. We would add that both ingredients are mostly missing, yet, from the AI features, consequently emphasizing the crucial role of human creativity in defining wisdom and realistic side of the targeted balance. It also resulted the search for KR and the link with (along with perennial values of) Aristotelian concept of phronesis (practical wisdom), where we can see the explicit idea of using KR to leverage the right/optimal decisions in the complicate context of Earth ecosystem crises (the right thing to do in particular circumstances). We notice that, approaching KR and the concept of phronesis, actionable scientific knowledge could be obtained and further used by organizations/individuals in difficult processes of decision, i.e., just the reality we are going to face more and more in our turbulent World. Still, the World realities and potential Earth ecosystem challenges, crises and threats are complicate and under a dynamic uncertainty, while people actions are sometimes more unpredictable, generating new worries while fighting the actual ones, i.e., we have to continue and deeper analyse the today known and the tomorrow unknown, in order to find the sustainable progress new ways to follow, by KR.