Daniel Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari in Conversation

Responsibility for decision-making is shifting to artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms.

Most decision-making is full of noise. People’s decisions are less biased than they are noisy. Humans are narrow, noisy thinkers, but robots and AI are not. They are better at analyzing algorithms, and their processing frames ideas broadly. One consequence is that AI will be wiser and ultimately more emotionally intelligent than people.

Exercising emotional intelligence calls for analyzing biological signals – voice, facial movements, and the content and tone of speech. Emotional intelligence depends on pattern recognition, at which AI excels, so biometric sensors may prove better able to analyze someone’s emotional state than other people could, and it doesn’t introduce emotion or noise. Still, while AI may develop emotional intelligence, it will not develop emotions.

Today human judgment remains central to business, so the need to improve how people make decisions remains an important near-term consideration. Instead of making stock-trading decisions, people will be able to set up algorithms to do that...