"In God we trust, AI may need a bit more thrust!

One of my friends, now an AI professor at IIT, always begins his course with the disclaimer that 'Artificial Intelligence is not a substitute for human stupidity'. AI is a great technology, and advancements in generative AI have taken it to the next level. Most importantly, it has now touched the B2C segment, and all generations are looking forward to more and more use cases of how AI can ease their lives. So much so that some coffee corner discussions in the office now focus on the future of work and whether humans would be needed in the workforce in the years to come.

My take here is very simple and straightforward. For sure, AI and humans will co-exist, and humanity will witness huge technological advancements, better quality of life, and improved standards of living for everyone. The nature of our jobs will change, and we will focus more and more on building better technology and realizing use cases by which it can help our people and the planet. What will not change are human values and our cognitive skills in various situations. Let me take this opportunity to narrate a recent incident that helped reemphasize this point.

Last week, a few of my friends and I were evaluating a software application that was released with a new AI use case. Upon running the AI use case, the application made some predictions and showed us the results in a number of jazzy graphs. We looked at the results, and each of us started deriving various insights and rationales from the results. Everything seemed to bind together, and we were extremely happy with the predictions. Then, one of us suggested changing certain parameters in the configuration and rechecking the results. When we tried to do that, to our surprise, we discovered that the current configuration parameter was blank, and we were visualizing some random results!

We had a good laugh; however, we also realized that there is no replacement for human cognitive skills. Why blame technology? Even when someone shares information with us, it is expected that we use our cognitive skills to understand the veracity of the information and then interpret the results. Rest assured, AI is a great enabler; however, if we want to derive maximum value out of this synergy, human skills will be absolutely required as well!

So, let's put the fear of AI replacing jobs behind us and help create a better and sustainable future for generations to come!"