Toronto Mensa Inquiring Minds: Tool, Not Teammate: Staying Intelligent in the Age of Collaborative AI

In 2005, two amateur chess players using standard computers defeated both grandmasters and the strongest chess engines then available. Their advantage was not skill or processing power, but a better process for working with their machines. As conversational AI becomes part of routine work, that finding has renewed relevance.

Dr. Emma Schleiger will provide a systematic review of more than 1,000 AI applications that set out to define genuine collaborative intelligence: the conditions under which humans and AI working together produce better outcomes than either could alone. That definition is the starting point for a practical question. How do we collaborate with AI as a tool, and do it well, without slipping into the misunderstood risks of treating it as a teammate? Fluent, responsive systems invite a degree of trust we would ordinarily reserve for experts. That tendency amplifies well-documented human biases, including over-reliance on system outputs, anchoring on an initial suggestion, mistaking fluent prose for sound reasoning, and the gradual offloading of judgment we cannot afford to lose.

As the 2005 players showed, the advantage lies not in the machine, nor in the person, but in the quality of the process between them. The talk offers a practical basis for that process: how to interrogate AI rather than defer to it, where to build deliberate friction into a workflow, and how to keep judgment where it belongs.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Emma Schleiger holds a PhD in clinical neuroscience from the University of Queensland. She studies the human side of working with AI: how people trust, judge, and reason alongside intelligent systems, and what is gained or lost in the process. She will be speaking to us from Brisbane, Australia.

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NOTE: This is a FREE event, but you must register in advance by emailing Kathleen Smith at kathleen.walton.smith@gmail.com.

For more information, contact Kathleen Smith at kathleen.walton.smith@gmail.com.