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                    “Intelligent individuals learn from everything and everyone;
      average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.”
                                                           – Socrates


                                        INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES

KEY POINTS

1. Intellect (reasoning) and intelligence (added emotions) are attributes of living creatures only having rich knowledge verified by real-life experience.
2. Intellect and intelligence work together to build, extend, and expand knowledge.
3. Intellect can not “work” successfully without the proper knowledge.
4. Knowledge and intellect together produce the “threshold value” needed for any decision-making process.
5. Intelligent technology (i.e. AI) is advanced information technology targeted at automation of reasoning and decision-making.
6. The goal of intelligent technology is to support humans' self-improvement by “augmenting” their cognitive abilities through human-AI communication and collaboration.

      Information, Life, Knowledge, Intelligence…and Everything Else

Dear Reader,
When we discuss knowledge we have to bear in mind that it “resides” in the brain of the living creatures only or whatever “organ” that carries out its functions in “brainless” creatures/organisms. Knowledge is always tightly related to life as its inseparable characteristic. Life, without knowledge about “everything” it needs to exist will not survive.
When we try to define life, we usually focus on processes like metabolism and reproduction. These two are fundamental characteristics of all living organisms. But there is another fundamental characteristic that distinguishes living from non-living matter. Unlike inanimate (non-living) matter, living uses information to carry out and control all the processes taking place in it and also to generate all the reactions to information incoming from the environment (natural and social). But it not only deliberately uses information. It can also transfer information internally and externally to other living (and non-living) systems/creatures. Therefore, every living creature is an „information processing, generating, and transmitting/communicating (living) system.“
Obviously, in life “Information is King” – it runs everything. But somehow, we tend to omit the fundamental role/function of information for living organisms – building knowledge. And this knowledge becomes the fundament on which we develop our intellect and intelligence.
Let’s now pay attention to our “major” scientific and technological achievement so far – “intelligent” non-living matter, which we so proudly call today “artificial intelligence” (AI).

Intelligent Technologies

According to Wikipedia (quote): “Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge for achieving practical goals.” As we can see knowledge underlays technology. The term “intelligent machines” usually refers to computers powered by “intelligent technologies.” So knowledge is also included (“stealthy”) in it.
The Intelligent technologies (IntelTech) are designed to simulate human brain activities related to intellect and intelligence. Intellect, based on knowledge, processes the “meaningful” information (modulated energy flow in the form of various kinds of signals) coming from the surrounding environment. Intelligence helps the intellect process the added “fuzzy” information “produced” by our feelings and emotions (both products of the biochemical processes in our bodies).
Despite the developers of intelligent technologies calling them proudly “artificial intelligence”, today they just can simulate some cognitive and reasoning activities of the human brain. So, in my view, it is more correct to call them “artificial intellect.” Will they someday “raize” (self-develop) and start demonstrating intelligence, i.e. added emotions and fillings to reasoning, I think nobody can predict now, except the authors of Sci-fi novels and movies.
My view (definition) about the relation between intellect and intelligence is:
Intelligence = Intellect (reasoning) + Emotions (feelings)
Dear Reader, you can find more information on these topics in Part 3 of Book 1 attached as a PDF file (Book1_Part3.pdf) to this blog section (the link is below).
Please, do not take me wrong. I am an engineer in industrial automation by background (i.e. “technophile”) and don’t want in any way to offend the guys developing AI technology. We all just have to stick to the correct terminology.

Intelligent Technologies in Knowledge Transfer

The primary application areas of AI (i.e. intelligent technology) are in the automation of complex information systems and processes that require control and creativity of human-like intellect. The knowledge transfer (KT) systems/platforms and processes belong to this group of complex systems and processes.
As was presented already in the KT section of this blog, such systems include a lot of complex components (among them humans – the most complex of them all), processes, and operations that require constant real-time control so the system can function at its highest efficiency.
   Integrating AI-based technologies in KT systems will automate many processes taking part in these kinds of systems. Among those are:
- AI-powered personal KT assistants to guide both knowledge contributors and seekers to perform correctly their communication and interaction with the system
- Creating human-centered human-machine interfaces (voice and visual) for bidirectional communication
- Personalization – detecting knowledge gaps and failures of the learner in real-time and suggesting additional knowledge paths to correct them; creating personalized knowledge structures/maps and paths on them following the personal preferences of the learner; synchronizing the KT process with the user’s style, etc.
- Automation of monitoring, collection of data (history of KT process for each user), applying metrics, analytics, and creation of feedback data for presenting to both users and
   e-tutors/mentors for further (personalized) guidance of the learner.

You can find more info on these in the next section of this blog. The Global Knowledge Platform (GKP) project, presented there is based on both advanced knowledge and intelligent technologies for creating efficient KT. The PDF file attached there presents also the innovative concepts underlying the GKP project.

We will discuss the future of intelligent technologies in KT in more detail in the next section titled The Future of Knowledge Transfer.

Are you ready to continue your quest to The Future of Knowledge Transfer?
Let’s do it together (again).
Tinko Stoyanov
Your Author and Guide