Becoming androids: 'IoT is about human augmentation', says expert panel

IPExpo panel disagrees about the value of humans in an interconnected world

The Internet of Things (IoT) caused an argument at the IPExpo conference as panellists strongly disagreed about the extent to which humans should be involved in digesting and processing data.

Some believed that IoT is about providing data for people to analyse, while others thought that it should be independent, and outside human control.

Harvey Lewis, director at Deloitte MCS, was in the former camp.

"When you realise that the IoT is about supporting human decision making, and is a measure of human behaviour, that's the 'Aha!' moment," said Lewis. "IoT is really about human augmentation. The information that the IoT collects isn't really useful unless it's put into the hands of a person who is then able to take decisions and act upon it."

He continued: "We're used to thinking of it as machine to machine, and we need to start thinking about IoT as machine to human."

But this statement did not sit well with James Hatch, director of BAE systems applied intelligence.

"I don't agree," said Hatch. "The information will be put to people for the next few years, but after that you can just take people out of the loop. As automation improves you should get to the stage where things just work. We're already pretty much there with electricity. But IoT will get to a place where all the stuff around us does what it needs to do without us getting involved," he argued.

Continuing the theme of machine to machine communication, the biggest issue with IoT for Alicia Asin Perez, CEO and co-founder of platform provider Libelium, is one of interoperability.

"Everyone is underestimating interoperability," Perez began. "Everyone is focusing on what to do in order to transform data into information, but the creation of these networks themselves is not trivial.

"We see new technologies coming out every year. We're now seeing low power sensors and systems. Meanwhile many companies are promoting the ultimate cloud platform. One thing that's clear is that it's not going to be a market dominated by one player, so interoperability is one of the barriers we need to focus on," she concluded.

Earlier at the conference Github's Nigel Abbott argued that firms should automate certain activities to allow humans to focus on creativity.