Published: 05-Oct-2024 |
| AI sometimes gets a bad rap. Many people are wary if not outright scared. To a large extent it's the fault of our industry! We use human like terms to describe an inanimate item. We call it Artificial Intelligence. We talk of "machine learning", "deep learning ", "training".
We speak to the Chatbots in a human way and they appear to give a humanoid answer. To a person without experience in this field it could easily be seen as "intelligent", even human. As soon as you talk of humanity we get into a whole new realm of philosophy, life, even religion. If a person thinks AI is "alive", you've lost them if you try to sell them on AI. Personally I like talking of "expert systems", but the buzzwords are artificial intelligence and machine learning so it's impossible to try to change. What I can do is explain that the most important aspect of AI is it is "artificial", it's just a well-designed software application, nothing more, not remotely "human", even when it carries on an "intelligent" conversation with you! It's no different to 160 years ago when people thought that a little man lived inside a radio! Imagine if 200 years ago you had shown those people a working cell phone. They would have said it's magic! In 2023 we have had some exciting developments. We have advanced software engineering as well as computer technology to process data quickly and store gigantic amounts of data. This has allowed us to design better software that does more things than say Excel which "only" adds and multiplies numbers. Many people hearing AI immediately compare it to their jobs. In talking to a lawyer recently his first comment was AI can't do his job. Of course he is right, just like a car can't do his job, but he certainly needs that car to get to court. AI would make him more efficient and help him in his job. It would help his staff do their job, just like Google search won't take away a person's job, but rather make them more efficient. That's the other issue with AI. People are rightfully scared it will remove their job, because "it is so clever". If their job is to add numbers and they refuse to use a computer then Excel would have taken their job long ago. You simply have to adapt. If you do, you'll be fine. |