Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Human Intelligence. So What?
What matters is if it can make me better at my job or take it.
AI may or may not be human-like intelligence…from a practical standpoint, that’s irrelevant.
With the appearance of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, many are debating whether artificial intelligence is intelligent, if it is equal to human intelligence or even if it merits the term “artificial intelligence.”
I think these are interesting questions and deserve some attention to better understand the capabilities and limits of AI. Philosophers and technologists can and should spend time thinking about these topics. However, from an immediate and practical standpoint, those types of inquiry are irrelevant for most of us.
The questions the vast majority of us are concerned about are;
In the short term, what does this mean for me in my workplace?
In the long term, will this technology help or hurt humanity?
It’s obvious CEOs think generative AI can improve employee productivity and creativity as well as replace workers. IBM is foregoing hiring 7800 HR and other back office jobs because its CEO thinks AI can do their work instead. Reports from Goldman Sachs, Open AI and others project which categories of job will be most affected by generative AI, either by creating, modifying or eliminating jobs. A Resume Builder survey claims 9 out of 10 CEOs are hiring employees with generative AI skills and a Stanford and MIT study showed a significant productivity increase from using generative AI in the customer service realm.
If I’m an email marketer, I want to know how generative AI can help me get better responses from my audience. Or if it can now replace what I’m doing now or in the future and I need to think about gaining other skills. Same if I’m a coder. How can generative AI help me write better code, faster. Or long term what I need to do to remain competitive.
Longer term is the debate over AI’s impact on humanity for good or ill. AI godfather, Geoffrey Hinton, believes AI may be a more immediate threat to human kind than climate change. This is on top of the letter signed by many tech luminaries calling for a pause on large scale AI experiments.
In sum, while philosophical questions about AI are interesting and potentially insightful, the bigger and more immediate question for most of us given the huge impact generative AI will make on the world is, “what does this mean for my job and my life?”
Can AI Produce Human-level Art?
Is it possible for generative AI to produce high levels of human work in the areas of fine art, writing and other arenas in which creativity and emotion make those works special? While this is a somewhat philosophical question, it gets immediately practical for those whose role is producing those works, both from a personal and business standpoint.
Many say generative AI cannot really produce high-quality work with a true human touch. Since this is a subjective matter, it’s hard to quantify objectively. Perhaps one way is seeing if humans who don’t know the source of the piece believe AI generative works meet the highest standards of human output.
This is exactly what seems to be happening. Given the results of at least two competitions (here and here), human judges are already awarding prizes to AI generated art.
Many fellow professors say that the AI-generated writing submissions are of poor quality. To this I would say three things:
How do you know you have caught all the AI-generated submissions? Maybe the really good ones fooled you into thinking the student wrote them.
Generative AI output can be improved via better prompts. Perhaps the submissions you think are bad are just ones that resulted from bad prompts.
Generative AI is only going to get better. And fast. So what you are seeing now is only a glimpse of what is coming.
In sum, I think many people underestimate the capabilities of generative AI as it stands now and are discounting what it will be able to do in the near future.
Ideas for You…
I’m a big fan of concepts, frameworks, models, maxims and “laws”. In fact, I tell my MBA they leave the university with three things; their degree, their network and the business concepts, models, and frameworks the learned during their time here.
Here are some recent pieces that offer a number of ideas you might find interesting and useful. Enjoy.
Top 25 Interesting Ideas and Concepts Everyone Should Know - Chris Meyer
50 Ideas That Changed My Life - David Perell
40 Mind-Expanding Concepts - Gurwinder
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (~100 Models Explained) - Farnham Street Blog
Hope you have a great week!