Towards An Integrated Study of Human Cognition in IT at Deep AI Era

Abstract

Deep AI and big data have reshaped the IT field. Since AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems for problem solving, the current landscape of IT provides an excellent opportunity for us to re-examine how human cognition has responded to new developments in IT. In this paper, we discuss several issues related to human cognition in IT at AI-enriched big data era. First, we note that deep AI reflects human beings’ needs for causality and explanations, and review a couple of related aspects. We then examine human cognition in IT from two perspectives: On the theoretical side, recent developments in quantum computing has the potential to reveal complex nature of human cognition in the form of quantum cognition, and on the practical side, cognitive bias may play a negative role, as demonstrated in the way of dealing with fake news. The complexity of human cognition in IT leads to a proposed multi-layer concept description which is based on our view that a complete concept definition is impossible without incorporating human cognitive feedback in the loop. We conclude this paper by emphasizing the need for integrated study of human cognition in IT.