A CTO Explains Why AI Still Cannot Replace Human Judgment

Artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, yet a persistent gap between its strengths and its blind spots reveals an uncomfortable truth: the technology remains a work in progress when it comes to basic human judgment, according to Madhu Shashanka, co-founder and chief technology officer at Concentric AI, a data security software company.

Shashanka points to autonomous vehicles as a telling example. Waymo's self-driving cars have logged tens of millions of miles with a crash rate well below that of human drivers — an impressive technical achievement. Yet those same vehicles routinely collect parking tickets, idle in disabled spots, linger in tow-away zones, or block church garages on Sunday mornings. The Wall Street Journal has documented these recurring, easily avoidable mistakes.

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That contradiction — remarkable competence on hard problems paired with baffling failure on simple ones — captures the broader state of AI development today. Systems that can parse complex data or generate sophisticated output still lack the contextual awareness and commonsense reasoning that humans apply almost instinctively in everyday situations.

For workers and businesses, the implications are significant. The question of which jobs AI will displace and which it will leave intact may hinge less on task complexity than on the degree to which a role demands nuanced, situational judgment. Roles requiring adaptive decision-making in unpredictable environments appear more insulated from automation than those involving well-defined, repeatable processes — even technically demanding ones.

The lesson from the parking-ticket problem, Shashanka suggests, is that human expertise is not simply a placeholder until AI catches up. It remains a distinct and necessary input, particularly where context, culture, and common sense intersect. Continue reading at Business | The Guardian.