"Retro humanity" - Preserving the human touch

"Retro humanity" refers to the idea of embracing and valuing the unique, authentic, and timeless aspects of human nature and our qualities, as we continue to advance and integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into our lives.

It highlights the importance of preserving and incorporating the essence of what makes us human, such as creativity, emotion, innovation, and individual perspectives.?

The progression of Artificial Intelligence

Undoubtedly, many of us have witnessed the exponential growth of AI, its use cases, and its impact on our daily lives. For years, society has consciously (and subconsciously) invested millions of hours in feeding a "digital brain" with our views, opinions, knowledge, and experiences – all in pursuit of the ultimate convenience.

We strive for the path of least resistance, the perfect customer experience, aggressive competitive advantage, and compelling revenue growth. But have we ever stopped to think about the cost of this convenience? Have we considered the potential consequences of relying too heavily on AI?

Preserving the human touch

The beauty of human expression is that it is not always perfect, but it is always authentic. Our emotions, experiences, and perspectives shape the way we create and interpret things such as customer enquiries, art, literature, and innovation.

While AI can certainly mimic these qualities, it will never be able to fully replicate them.

I have written several articles touching on "A human intelligence strategy" and "Think with robots, not like them" which also emphasise the need and importance of humans in an AI revolution.

"Connected intelligence" is a model I created over 5 years ago and one I’ve been heavily promoting and implementing, the model has been designed to assess the incoming work demand and use the right intelligence at the right time for the best outcome. ?This model has delivered some compelling results which has seen organisations reap millions in benefits and achieve outcomes they never thought possible.?However, it's interesting to see how humans are becoming lazier with the model, by forgetting their place, relying too heavily on the AI output, not challenging, and choosing to conform. As a result they are subconsciously shaping the service to meet the technology rather than the reverse – simply because it’s more convenient.

The search for authenticity

In a world where everything is influenced and created by AI, we may begin to question the authenticity and uniqueness of our content or outputs, such as music, art, literature, opinions, and topics.

Will we risk stagnation if we choose to conform?

For me, while AI has many benefits, and I'm an advocate, we must be mindful of the potential consequences of relying too heavily on machine output. We must remember that the human touch is irreplaceable and that our creativity and expression are what make us and our outcomes unique.

Society has a critical role to play here also.?For me consumer expectations are the number one driver for digital transformation and innovation, consumers seek convenience, simplicity and automation - society needs to understand the behaviours they’re driving in organisations around the use of AI. ?Let us ensure that we continue to embrace human outputs and involvement and use technology to augment our abilities rather than replace them or become complacent in the face of convenience.

Volcanoes

Without judging my parenting skills, I have a close to home example to tell..

My 9 year old son had some school work to research Volcanoes, he was tasked with researching the topic and writing up his top 10 facts. ?I introduced #chatgpt to him some weeks before and told him that instead of “Googling it”, maybe try #chatgpt , so he did.?He completed the ‘perfect answer’; submitted his homework in record time, and continued his gaming with friends.?Where I applauded him for his ingenuity (and for crafting some decent ?‘prompts’), it made me realise then that there is a bigger cost here for this convenience.?Work ethic? the importance of making mistakes? Venturing down rabbit holes? Devising his own opinion/thoughts? Struggling? Sense of achievement? Asking for help? Learning? Having a 'did you know' conversation at dinner?

If we are simply going to regurgitate the outputs of large language models we will find ourselves losing authenticity and creativity in our outputs, and we will plateau as a society.

Tech for good

With the rapid advancements in this technology, if we choose to conform, I believe we will enter an era of "retro humanity." In our pursuit of convenience, we will spend equally as much time trying to find our relevance in this world. It is our adaptability as humans that will allow us to do so but just like vinyl records, although retro, their quality is unique and authentic, and still loved by many, but certainly less convenient.

As we move forward, we need to embrace AI, but we must also embrace humanity and use it to our advantage. We must leverage our unique skills and strengths to innovate and create a better world for ourselves and future generations. We must not forget that the ultimate goal of technology is to serve humanity, not the other way around.

#innovation #artificialintelligence #techforgood