In the age of artificial intelligence, software can crunch numbers in a heartbeat and an agent can automate manual processes, but are they crunching the right numbers and automating the right processes?
To answer this question, we need to ensure the technology is solving the right things, and solving them right.
That’s the premise of a “super skill” that I identify via my article in eLearning Industry.
It’s about that time again when I look back on my blogging year and choose a theme that connects the breadth of topics that I managed to cover.
This time I’ve borrowed “Think different” from Apple’s advertising campaign at the turn of the millennium. While the adverbial in this phrase omits the “‑ly” suffix in the American fashion, I chose it because it encapsulates the spirit of blogging – which is to add something fresh, independent, and above all, personal.
Sometimes my views are contrarian, sometimes they’re counter-contrarian. Sometimes they raise eyebrows, they’re misinterpreted, or they upset people who disagree with me.
Regardless, my objective is to share my ideas, my experiences, and my insights. That’s why I don’t use AI to write my posts. I’m not against anyone using it as a tool for writing; it’s just that my posts, on this blog, come from the heart.
Steve Jobs said it best: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
While I consider myself neither crazy nor genius, I do hope that somewhere, somehow, I can change the world, one bite at a time…
❤
I hope you get a chance to rest and recharge, and I look forward to reconnecting with you in the new year!
In this research study, strategy consultants who used GPT-4 as a tool to assist them with “inside the frontier” tasks (within the capability of AI) performed significantly better than their counterparts did in terms of quality and productivity.
Hence for such tasks, the authors called AI a quality and productivity booster.
However, those who used GPT-4 for “outside the frontier” tasks (beyond the capability of AI without extensive human guidance) performed significantly worse than their counterparts did in terms of correctness.
Hence for such tasks, the authors called AI a quality disruptor. (Though I’d be more inclined to call it an accuracy disruptor, as the “quality” of the users’ work was superior regardless of correctness.)
In the words of the authors, “Professionals who had a negative performance when using AI tended to blindly adopt its output and interrogate it less”. My inference is that the inside-the-frontier users may have behaved similarly, but because the AI was up to the task they got away with it. For something more complicated, they came unstuck.
OK, but that was just an experiment. Could it happen in real life? You bet.
“I now realise that AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased” wrote a professor at Macquarie University on behalf of a group of academics who made a false submission to a parliamentary inquiry!
Given the frontier of AI capability is ever shifting, we’ll never be certain at any point in time whether a given task lay inside or outside it. So as users of the technology we need to maintain a critical mindset.
In other words, use artificial intelligence to augment your human intelligence, rather than replace it.
E-Learning Provocateur 