Problem

You are seeing advances in artificial intelligence that are amazing. With new capabilities for perception from deep learning and related technology, many possibilities for automation of jobs arise, such as replacing human truck drivers with software, replacing lawyers for legal processes, replacing ad men with automated targeted ads (wait that one already happened...).

How are you going to keep up with large companies selling to you, replacing you, and redirecting you? How are you going to make decisions and act effectively, sometimes in competition with automated systems, and sometimes using your own automated systems?

For more insights we recommend the book The Master Algorithm.

Solution

From billions of years of evolution, you have amazing capabilities yourself. One of these is situated cognition and a related one is spatial memory.

With situated cognition you have built up capabilities for perception, comprehension and prediction in the real world that are subtle. Because you have acted on objects and seen the results, such as talking with another person or ice skating, you have integrated many different pieces of information that can lead you to predict future events involving these or similar objects. Spatial memory has evolved to provide you with a very efficient way to recall and match these situations with prior experience.

You can be augmented to perceive information artifacts and draw on your situated cognition and spatial memory to decide and act. With augmented reality, visualizations can be made spatial for you, so that you don't just look at them on a screen, you walk in it, and place things in locations that have meaning for you. It involves more of your senses, your proprioceptors. You can take your spatial cognition capabilities to the next level with augmented cognition.