AI vs. Automation: Simplifying the Future of Work for Everyone
The more AI becomes popular, the more I see people conflating AI and Automation. I see these things plastered all over LinkedIn:
I suppose the technical term of what's happening is semantic drift. As an idea explodes in popularity, its original concept get muddied as people explore the ideas, businesses rush to monetize it, bloggers try to capitalize on it for clicks and more.
It's inevitable and normal. That's why you see companies hiring for "agile scrum masters", not just "scrum masters". That's because the term "agile scrum master" needed to be created after the late majority destroyed the original meaning of the term. What's next, "Agile agile coach"?
Anywho, it's important to know what the differences are and the intention of each.
AI is a smart robot, automation is a dumb one.
And yes, you can combine the two. I can have AI analyze 25 status reports from my program portfolio, find common patterns and risks. I can have it summarize the data, generate charts, whatever. I can also tell it to generate the outcome in a spreadsheet and include the columns: Status, Stakeholder, Top Risks, etc etc.
I can use automation to get that data into whatever AI I'm using, and to send out a status update email.
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So when people say you can automate that with AI, it's sorta true, but be skeptical because specifics matter in this particular ecosystem.
Our State of AI in Change Management and State of Change Management surveys are both automated and are able to be analyzed through AI.
A little robot take the data from Airtable and my own backend system, formats them into a CSV and emails it to me every few days. Both sites have simple reports that spit out the data as it comes in and my only manual intervention is uploading the new data to the AI bot that analyzes them.
This is only because I was too lazy to do this through Open AI's api. I might do that on the train this morning as I head down to see the new spectacular musical The Book of Mormon with one of my kids! See, AI has radically changed my job so I can take a day off to go see a play.
When you want to automate things
Zapier: non-techie friendly platform that lets you connect any systems across the internet. Ex: When someone submits the form for my AI survey, grab 5 random rows from this Airtable table and add them to Buffer.
Make.com : Zapier on steroids. Basically the same thing, but with way more apps, recipes and possibilties.
Both of these automation platforms also use a magical technical thingy called Webhooks. That means if you have a custom application, you can use Webhooks to connect it to everything. I only added that because if you're a little technical, holy cow you'll be able to do some amazing things.
And yes, both of them are hooked into AI so you can automate everything with the analysis power of AI.