On the Augmentation of Cognitive Accuracy and Cognitive Precision in Human/Cog Ensembles

TL;DR

This paper investigates how human-cognitive system ensembles enhance cognitive accuracy and precision through collaborative interaction, demonstrating that different types of information and problem types improve performance.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that diverse informational inputs in human-cog ensembles increase cognitive accuracy and precision across various problem types.

Findings

Information types like policies, examples, and suggestions improve performance.

Both cognitive accuracy and precision are enhanced in inventive problem solving and puzzles.

Results compare favorably with similar studies on human-cog collaboration.

Abstract

Whenever humans use tools human performance is enhanced. Cognitive systems are a new kind of tool continually increasing in cognitive capability and are now performing high level cognitive tasks previously thought to be explicitly human. Usage of such tools, known as cogs, are expected to result in ever increasing levels of human cognitive augmentation. In a human cog ensemble, a cooperative, peer to peer, and collaborative dialog between a human and a cognitive system, human cognitive capability is augmented as a result of the interaction. The human cog ensemble is therefore able to achieve more than just the human or the cog working alone. This article presents results from two studies designed to measure the effect information supplied by a cog has on cognitive accuracy, the ability to produce the correct result, and cognitive precision, the propensity to produce only the correct result. Both cognitive accuracy and cognitive precision are shown to be increased by information of different types (policies and rules, examples, and suggestions) and with different kinds of problems (inventive problem solving and puzzles). Similar effects shown in other studies are compared.