AI
Transformative technologies affect both our professional and personal lives. They have lasting impact and quickly become part of the norm of how modern society functions. AI is the latest to join that transformative list (see below) and is rapidly emerging as the one, along with the Internet itself, as having the greatest impact across all facets of our society.
Transformative Technologies over last 50 years
- Relational Databases and SQL (1970s–1980s)
- Personal Computers (1980s)
- The Internet and Web Technologies (1990s–Present)
- Open-Source Software (1990s–Present)
- Virtualization (1990s–2000s)
- Cloud Computing (2000s–Present)
- Cybersecurity (2000s–Present)
- Mobile Computing and Smartphones (2000s–Present)
- DevOps and Agile Practices (2010s)
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (2010s–Present)
From a technologist’s perspective, AI is a culmination of several of its predecessors’ transformative technologies such as RDBMs, Virtualization and Cloud Computing. It has spun to life so quickly over the last few years as its creators have gained access to vast amounts of training data and needed computational power to implement the complex algorithms effectively.
AI frees up time from routine tasks, allowing you to focus on those that often go overlooked. Imagine reversing the 80-20 rule—spending most of your time on the 80% of tasks that rarely receive the attention they deserve. Would this lead to higher-value contributions? To achieve this transformation effectively, the whole team must adopt AI together, ensuring alignment and shared progress.
AI does seem like “magic” to many – even very technical people (including the author 😊). We’re conditioned by popular sci-fi movies and TV shows to think AI will be dangerous – which is probably true. “I, Robot”, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Terminator (Skynet)” are just three of the films popularized run-away AI technology, hopefully those stories will help shape how we choose to integrate AI into our everyday lives.
I have started referring to AI as AYE-AYE, a play on what would happen once its emergence dominates our technology interactions 😀.
Misnomers
AI is NOT Sentient or Conscious - Many people mistakenly believe that AI systems have feelings, self-awareness, or independent thought. AI operates entirely based on mathematical algorithms and patterns within data. It does not "understand" or "think" like humans—it executes programmed tasks or learns correlations from vast amounts of well-organized data.
The data sets have been organized around natural language structures and the underlying knowledge itself organized around how we are believed to organize knowledge. This combination allows AI tools to interact with each of us in what appears to be a sentient approach. If you have been using tools like ChatGPT, it is easy to realize this was a valuable choice as it allows anyone to interact with AI somewhat like how we interact with each other and gain its benefits.
AI Can’t Work Without Human Oversight - AI is not fully autonomous in its current state of the art. It can’t make flawless decisions on its own. While AI can automate many analytical processes, it still requires human guidance for tasks like defining objectives to compute, curating training data to keep expanding its data sets, interpreting results, and addressing errors or biases in the system. Researchers continue to pursue AI autonomy to further speed up its progress, but that is where the “Skynet” risks come into play.
The last part, interpreting results, addressing errors or biases in the system, are where much of today’s risks reside. The main lesson from "If I ask you to jump off the bridge, would you?" is to think critically and independently rather than blindly following authority, instructions, or peer pressure. The lesson encourages individuals to evaluate the rationale, consequences, and risks of an action before deciding whether to proceed, even if someone you trust, or respect suggests it. This lesson underscores the importance of personal responsibility and discernment when using AI, reminding yourself and those in your peer group to act based on sound judgment rather than conformity or obedience without question.
AI Will Replace All Jobs – We’re being conditioned, rightly so, to fear that AI will lead to mass unemployment, but this overlooks the nuances of how AI transforms industries as has prior transformative technologies. AI can be used widely to automate repetitive, low-complexity tasks (which non-AI based computers have been doing for decades (put away that calculator and do your 9 times tables)). If used wisely, AI frees up time to create opportunities for new roles focused on managing, implementing, and improving our world around us. AI will no doubt be viewed as an evolution of how our workforce functions, we should not rush to get to the other side, but instead take time to learn what we need to learn, so the other side is filled with green grass hills.
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If you're hesitant about AI, start by viewing it simply as a more robust version of Google Search. Use it for what it can do today, but don't be hesitant to experiment. Don't overthink how it works. Hopefully, after exploring these materials, you'll feel more comfortable and ready to embrace AI further. (open AI topics)