Here be AI Dragons

The AI hype is in full swing, sometimes I wonder if anything posted on LinkedIn is ever real any more ;) As most IT people, I have played around with it (actually quite a lot) and at the very least, it can be said that there are certain warnings or issues with this technology that need to be addressed before it is fully implemented in a production environment.

Let's quickly recap...

AI is a branch of computer science focused on creating systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks include things like learning, reasoning, problem-solving, understanding natural language, and recognizing patterns.

You know what other technology is also REALLY good at recognizing patterns? Yes indeed, the human brain. After a discussion on LinkedIn a couple of week ago, I have been running daily AI "podcasts" during my daily commute. The input was one of my books, because I wanted to be very familiar with the base content. And yes, the experience is quite amazing, hearing two enthusiastic (maybe too enthusiastic) AI podcasters rave about my book and talking about the finer details.

But after a few sessions, cracks started to appear. My brain was noticing repeating patterns, repeated "behavior" that is not very human-like and even limited vocabulary. The magic quickly disappeared... a bit like the Wizard of Oz. It turns out, humans are REALLY good at recognizing AI. Ironic no? AI excels in emulating human behavior, and humans are adept at recognizing it.

So here is my suggestion for AI use:

• If you want to rollout AI but do NOT want people to know it is AI, don't bother, you will probably get negative publicity or backlash rather fast.
• If you are rolling out AI to production and you make it clear to your users/customers that it is AI, then your journey will contain a lot less Dragons (and yeah, this also applies to LinkedIn posts).

This post NOT written by AI, although the picture is obviously :)