12 Days of AI: 2023 Will Be Smashing

Thank you to all 50,000 viewers and almost 900 subscribers who have followed my first installment of this three-year project on the wild and wacky world of AI. Your support and engagement have been invaluable as I tried to make sense of the rapid developments with AI and my attempt to make AI a bit more human - AI for the rest of us. I am grateful for the opportunity to share my insights and knowledge with such a dedicated audience.

Now, here are a couple of points I'd like to discuss:?

Houston, We have a Robot Problem

Despite what all those flashy AI solution ads display and top-selling business book covers would have you believe - AI is not Will Smith's shiny robot. ?We have an AI image issue. This is what you get back when you google "AI". (I did not type robot, android, or alter this image in any way.)

People keep pushing the sci-fi narrative because it's so darn enjoyable, but let's not forget that AI is just a bunch of algorithms and code that is implemented in various ways by people. It is so tempting to let our closet Tom Swifts and Jonny Quests come out and play but using glossy robots or people's brains blown apart by digits to represent AI contributes to our collective fear and mistrust of technology.

The Chief Decision Scientist at Google, Cassie Kozyrkov wrote a great blog on real AI vs sci-fi AI.

This is why I chose the paper cut-out style for the "12 Days of AI" newsletter. The only thing threatening with these is a potential virtual paper cut.??

AI, the ultimate disruptive dyslexic. ?

Let's not get too carried away. AI can not walk and chew gum at the same time. Look at the examples of the Happy New Years greeting cards.

Yes, generative AI can do cool stuff, like win an art contest at an Ohio county fair or even get you a B+ on an art history paper. Generative AI remains very specialized and still requires a human to drive. Nothing has changed, I remember walking into Advanced Calculus with an HP-12 calculator, and you would have thought I had kidnapped the professor's dog and sold it to the local sausage factory. That same year, I had an English Lit professor who would not take papers printed on a dot matrix printer, so I would print them out and pay a typist $3.00 a page to retype. There is nothing new here. Our institutions will need to catch up.

Instead of describing technically, let me show you by comparing two responses to two simple questions:?

Question: AI, Draw me a house.

Response: (ChatGPT left and Midjourny right)?

Q: what is 2x2?

A:(ChatGPT left and Midjourny right)?

AI is ready for primetime?

Absolutely! Many industries and organizations are already embracing it, and employees are bringing more and more AI tools into the workplace. Enterprises need to adapt and adopt these technologies to stay competitive, which means a shift in corporate governance, IT policy, and security standards.

Enterpise IT will die

Ouch, did I just write that?

Enterprises need to adapt and adopt AI to remain competitive, which means a shift in corporate governance, IT policy, and security standards. As the divide between IT and operational technology (OT) becomes increasingly blurry, those ancient corporate governance policies and outdated security standards could become the Achilles' heel of significant corporations.

Remember, it's not the big that kills the small – it's the fast that kills the slow. Long live OT.

See you in 2023!??

Special thanks and 2022 gratitude go out to:

Oleg Mudrov , for brilliant ideas and for helping me on his late Calgary nights during my early London mornings. Irina Pando , my drafted editor and kept me from my own worst ideas. Nikhil Khurana , who planted the seed and weekly thoughts, kept me going. Uwem Ukpong , whose mentorship and council I treasure. Russ Cooper blast from my SAP past kept me motivated. C3 AI for conceiving and driving Enterprise AI. Mohamad Awad , for challenging and being a true believer, we have the best solution on the market. Rowland Barran , a brilliant idea smith, and creator. Lex Fridman , you're my Jonny Carson, AI Guru, and Shama, on a quest to understand. Lorenzo Simonelli , Thanks for your council on taking the higher road and your vision of being part of solving the Energy Trilemma. Ultimately this blog was your doing. Nadim Barakat sometimes you the only grown-up in the room. Thank You. Cassie Kozyrkov , your brilliant blogs, and videos are taking AI from the ethereal to the real. Shan J. keep being kind! The Achilles heel enterprise. IT will die comment is borrowed from our Houston conversations on the Patio.Elon Musk keeps sending rockets and keeps teaching me how to have thick skin. I will do more AI blog posts in 2023 than you will send rockets.

Mike Roshchin, Ph.D. , you are a loose cannon, and we need you to stay that way. You have a black belt in making the impossible possible. Yes, it frightens the horses.