Artificial Intelligence & Wisdom

Do you worry about how AI will eliminate jobs and professions?? I think that's a valid concern that unfortunately is often dismissed with motherhood platitudes like “Don’t worry, AI will do the jobs people don’t want to do, freeing up people to do the more meaningful work.”?? I don’t believe it’s that simple, nor do I believe that statement to be completely true… In fact, I think that logic is outright problematic. I am however still an AI optimist.

That platitude reminds me of the steel mini-mills story Clayton Christensen shared in his work, “The Innovators Dilemma”. ?He explained how traditional integrated steel manufacturers logically made themselves irrelevant. You see, mini-mills at first could only produce low-quality commoditized steel called rebar.? The incumbent integrated steel mills were happy to let go the low-end low-margin steel business to focus on the high-quality high-margin steel market.? It made perfect sense. “Don’t worry, we don’t want to be in that business, this will free us up to make higher-quality more profitable steel.” ?Sound familiar?? The problem was the mini-mills didn’t stop at rebar, they continued to mature and they kept moving up the quality scale until they completely displaced all the traditional integrated steel making incumbents.?

If we believe that AI will simply stop at simple tasks, the “menial” and “boring” tasks, then we as individuals and businesses can fall into the “innovators dilemma” trap.? By ignoring the disruptive nature and assuming our ways of working don’t fundamentally change, and that AI is only taking away the simple tasks, is exactly the same thinking those large integrated steel manufacturers had.? ?And they were right… Until they weren’t... and by then it was too late.?

Wait… Didn’t I say I was an AI optimist?? We, You, have an opportunity to be that disruptor instead of the disrupted by embracing the disruptive opportunity.? But to do that is hard, because we can mistake disruptive potential as incremental improvements. ?The difference is knowing if we should simply cede some menial tasks in the current ways we work… OR…? Completely change the entire ways of working…? Had those integrated steel mills embraced the disruptive mini-mill innovation perhaps they could have been the disruptor instead of the displaced.? Easier said than done…

Which brings me to the difference between intelligence and wisdom.? If you search for the definition differences in intelligence and wisdom on the Internet, you will get some great definitions.? To over simplify it however, I will suggest that Intelligence is akin to getting the right answer, and Wisdom is akin to asking the right question.? I asked ChatGPT if it was capable of artificial wisdom, and here is what it said.

Being wise, applying deep thought, emotional intelligence, empathy, human values, ethical principles are the ways you, and we can enable meaningful disruption instead of being disrupted.? This shift in the fundamental ways of working can mean evolving ones job from answering the questions, to questioning the answers, and questioning the questions…? ?Again easier said than done but if you want to stay relevant (as a job or as a company), I would advocate thinking broader about the disruptive opportunities and going beyond the “don’t worry” platitudes. ?If you stop at just automating some menial aspects of how you work today instead of thinking very differently about the entire ways of working, you may fall victim to the innovators dilemma.