The 5th International Conference on the Human Side of Service Engineering, Los Angeles, July, 2017

1. Wisdom Service Systems:
Harmonious Interactions between
People and Machine
Md. Abul Kalam Siddike
JAIST, Japan
Kazuo Iwano
JST, Japan
Kazuyoshi Hidaka
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Youji Kohda
JAIST, Japan
Jim Spohrer
IBM, USA

2. Highlights of Presentation
• Introduce “wisdom service systems” by developing a framework of
“wisdom service systems”.
• Show how appropriately designed cognitive mediators may eventually
harmoniously interact with people and machine.
• Suggest future research directions for more concretely developing the
wisdom service systems.
2

3. Presentation Outline
1. Wisdom as a Common Goods
2. Why We Need Wisdom Service Systems
3. Framework of Wisdom Systems
4. Future Research Directions
3

4. Why We Need Wisdom?
• People have limited life spans and limited cognitive capabilities, suffering
from “bounded rationality” in decision making.
(Simon, 1997)
• As knowledge accumulates in society, Jones (2005) identified the condition
known as the “knowledge burden”.
• In addition, there is a “half-life of information” in any innovation oriented
society.
(Arbesman, 2013)
• People flooded with data, information, knowledge, and intelligence.
(Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2011; Blates and Staudinger, 2000; Sternberg, 2003)
4

5. Traditional Ways of Solving Great Problems
• Great universities appeared as “knowledge factories” known for
teaching (learning), discovery (research), and application of
knowledge (entrepreneurship and policy making).
(Spohrer, Giuiusa, Demirkan and Ing, 2013)
• People also focus on acquiring special type of knowledge from
experience and a sense of humor to cope with life’s challenges.
• Nevertheless, people need more resilient and sustainable approaches
to address those greatest problems.
5

6. Technological Progress to Solve Those
Problems
6
Nature Whatwilldoforus
Tools
Data and information (as a tool will be able to process
trillionsofdataandinformation)
Assistant
Knowledge (as an assistant cognitive mediator will have
moreknowledgeaboutpeople)
Collaborator
Understanding (as a collaborator can understand
people’ssituationandculture,conditionsmorethanus)
Coach
Wisdom (as a coach can help our next generation build
andre-buildfromthescratch)

7. Traditional Wisdom
• Phronesis—the ability to make
the best judgement for the
common good.
• Wisdom as a special kind of
expert knowledge.
• Wisdom is the ability to use
knowledge, understanding and
judgement to achieve a
balance between individual
and collective human values.
7

8. What is Wisdom Service System?
• Wisdom service system as system in which people have cognitive
mediators that offer appropriate options by actuating the context and
situation.
• It helps people make wiser decisions (common goods) to solve
complex problems more efficiently and effectively, overcoming some
of the problems of bounded-rationality.
8

9. Why We Need Wisdom Service Systems? (1)
• In the age of information explosion or big data, service systems are
becoming more complex, and people are often drowning in
information.
• But people only able to use a fraction of information to make smart
or wise decisions (bounded rationality).
• Achieving common good is becoming more difficult, and more
important.
9

10. Why We Need Wisdom Service Systems? (2)
• The information may be available but cannot be processed efficiently or
effectively enough to make a smarter decision(individuals co-create more
value) or a wise decision (the common good is served, as well as individuals
individuals co-creating value).
• In addition, our conventional wisdom hardly grasps a perspective or
situation and understands it fully.
• Thus people make a choice from their guts with limited information.
• Finally, the complexity, quantity, diversity of data, information and expert
knowledge are in some ways making our decision harder.
10

11. Structure of Wisdom Service Systems
11

12. Wisdom Service System Process
Blue dots indicate entities in the
real world;
Yellow dots are metrics (socio
metrics) observed by
sociometers;
Green dots indicate appropriate
options (recommendations) generated
by mediators.
12

13. Observing Situations, Context and Culture
• Traditionally, people interact with people and object of real world to
understand people/object’s behavior, situation and culture.
• People actuate the situation, context and culture by physically visiting the
real world.
• In our proposed wisdom service system, sociometers (sensors/agents) able
to contextualize human communication behavior through the trusted
communication channels.
• In addition, cognitive mediators are also able to observe trillions of
unstructured data related to human and machine.
13

14. Understanding Situations, Context and
Culture
• Sociometers are able to predict and measure the social context of
people.
• Mediators have the ability to process the unstructured and structured
data to understand situations, context and culture based on their
models and knowledge representation of their users.
14

15. Grasping Situations, Context and Culture
• After understanding the complex situations, sociometers and
mediators can grasp the evolving patterns of human situations,
context and culture.
• This involved modeling the world, adapting those models, extended
the models and sharing the models with cognitive mediators of other
people.
15

16. Providing Options
• After observing, understanding and grasping people situations,
context and culture, mediators generate and provide
recommendations for their users.
• In this way, the decision making capabilities of people are enormously
augmented by the cognitive mediators.
• Thus, people will be better able to make wise decisions for solving
complex problems of business and society the benefit the common
good.
16

17. Wisdom Decision Process
17

18. Conclusion
• Explores a new way of actuating wisdom in service systems through
an elaboration of the processes for the harmonious collaboration
between people and machines.
• Predict that people will have cognitive mediators that help them
overcome some of the problems of bounded rationality.
• People working in all occupations in business and society will
potentially benefit from cognitive assistants and cognitive mediators.
18

19. Limitations and Future Research Directions
• This is a conceptual paper of wisdom service system. Future study
should be carried explaining real world wisdom service systems.
• How cognitive assistants helps to enhance people’s performance
through the enhancement of cognition, intelligence and capabilities.
19

20. Questions Please
Thank You Very Much
20