Digital Workers of the World Unite!
This week I was invited to attend the inaugural Digital Workers Forum in Silicon Valley. Expecting the gorgeous AI generated personalities I've come to love on Instagram, imagine how surprised and bitterly disappointed I was to find out the conference was filled with humans. Despite all her hard work, Milla Sofia wasn't even invited. #millasofiafin
Instead of bringing the real digital workers like Milla Sofia, the conference was filled with middle-aged nerds from boring companies like Google, Meta, NVIDIA and Microsoft.
They were demonstrating how their #aiagents could answer questions such as "What 10 AI companies can I invest in to make a billion dollars profit?" and "How do I eliminate 50% of my human employees?" To be clear... these were real questions discussed at the conference. The conference also tackled the tough questions like "Does anyone like interacting with AI agents?" or "What are the ethical implications of suddenly eliminating 50% of human jobs?" Just kidding! Of course, no one asked those last two questions at the conference.
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One thing that did capture my interest was the comparison to the autonomy levels developed for #selfdrivingcars. David Yang, Ph.D. , one of the luminaries at the conference, is proposing eight levels for describing the autonomy of digital AI agents. But is a single axis enough to talk about utility and value? Having been a founding member of the Autonomy Levels Working Group, I loved discussing this effort and happily did so with representatives from Google and Microsoft as well as many small companies. One theme, reiterated on stage by Microsoft's Dr. Valeria Sadovykh is that perhaps the ability to augment intelligence humans is more valuable than the ability to replace humans. On this I agree, having argued the same point with the leadership of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2000. The media-crazed leadership had wanted to solve the "full-autonomy problem" by eliminating the human whereas I argued that warfighters were not asking to be eliminated and wanted instead a collaborative relationship that kept them in the control loop.
One of the lessons learned from the early work we did to define autonomy levels is that a single dimension or axis may be of limited value. Early on, we added axes for task complexity and environmental complexity. After all, my washing machine is level five autonomous, it just works within a low task and environmental complexity. The same thing may be true here as we consider the autonomy levels for digital workers and AI agents. If we don't include context, a single dimension has limited value.
Another theme was the ability of corporations to control the output of #generativeAI and customize the technology for a particular enterprise or vertical. This may make good business sense, but the #questionoftheday for me was who benefits from this customization? Here's a hint... replace the word customization with bias, and consider that if you are not paying for the customization, you are likely the target rather than the beneficiary.
Digital Marketing Specialist at Alphatec Spine
1 年Great article! Interesting to think about how important it is to consider who is determining how autonomy is ranked.
It is a pity that the conference did not address questions "Does anyone like interacting with AI agents?" and "What are the ethical implications of suddenly eliminating 50% of human jobs?" Today, the systems of intelligent agents used in practice cannot yet replace a person, because they often cannot answer the client’s question (request), because they work within the strict framework defined in advance. If the question does not fit within these frameworks, the client is usually redirected to other sections of the site or redirected to the FAQ section. There is no need to talk about specific assistance to the client when it is necessary to analyze the client’s situation, find the solution he needs for the client and, most importantly, take the actions required by the client (for example, provide a deferment or discount on payment for the company’s services, or change the tariff, etc.)
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1 年...you have nothing to gain except bias, if not careful!!!
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1 年Yeah man! Not only do we need to unite our digital workers but we need them to propagate and then eliminate the meat-bodies. I for one aawait my transcendence into digital form so I can marry Milla Sofia. But don't worry, you can marry her too, digital workers are quite literally duplicatable. In fact I think I'll marry several of her. Uh, sorry was that too IG or Field for stodgy 'ol Linkedin? ???? Peace be with you and prosperity too.
Technology Strategist @ Microsoft | AI Adoption & Digital Transformation | University of Auckland Top 40 under 40
1 年Thank you David Bruemmer for mentioning and the ending is so strong - "replace the word?customization?with?bias, and consider that if you are not paying for the customization, you are likely the target rather than the beneficiary"