OK, I give up.
It seems that no matter what I get asked to talk about – privacy, information-related risks, the convergence of data and infogov – the first Q&A question I get these days almost always is about AI.
- What is it?
- Is it going to take my job?
- How do I utilize it?
And that’s all well and good, except that it’s not the point of the conversation we were supposed to be having!
If that’s happening me so often, then I’m gonna guess it’s happening to you too – and if it isn’t, it’s going to before much longer.
So let me tell you what I tell everybody else, and have for a while now.
- I’ve not seen a single AI-based information application, anywhere. There’s plenty of machine learning, and that’s terrific because it can be stupendously effective when it comes to such critical things as metadata and autoclassification. But when it comes to true self-teaching (vs. self-learning) “Artificial Intelligence,” not so much.
- Though the quality of generative AI like ChatGPT is much improved and will keep improving, it will always require human supervision to ensure you actually get the outcomes you want. These things are notorious for getting things wrong, and because they operate on information that was originally generated by humans, any mistakes made by humans, and any even-unintentional biases introduced by humans, will propagate throughout the content generated. So it is and will always be up to humans to make sure the information quality we need is there at the end.
- And finally, no, AI isn’t going to take your job, though it may change it. Already, smart technologies like machine learning are letting us let the system take care of what’s-what and us focus on the exceptions. My view is that as long as you keep pace with the changing tools and times, you should be all right. But I am seeing people who are in danger of letting their fears, uncertainties, and doubts distract from the work they’re doing, and that’s potentially a very bad thing.
So, to you – and to me – I say be ready to address the AI-related questions you inevitably are going to get regardless of what you went someplace to talk about. The last thing we need is another issue to change people’s minds about, but as has been famously said, “it is what it is,” and we just need to deal with it.