Some free thoughts on AI and the importance of people's expertise and experience

AI is starting to be of great help in many areas, and its rapidly growing power and capabilities are astonishing. What can we do to take advantage of it, and what might be the risks of our choices/ideas about it and about its presence in our processes?

In this article there are some free thoughts. Maybe you will agree, maybe you won't ... in this case, different points of view and any contribution are still welcome because they are always food for thought ??

What could be some interesting paradigms?

?? Should the paradigm be "Let AI do everything for you"? Should this paradigm be extended over time to "Delegate things and thoughts to AI"? In my opinion this approach may lead to failure, or at least, to an addiction to something... and, honestly speaking, it seems a trivialization of a complex situation.

I think that the paradigm might be the sum of two paradigms:

• "Work with AI", that is to consider the AI as a permanent, smart and brilliant member of our team to work with
• "Continuous improvement, about AI and about our people", because AIs themselves are neither static nor only the ones currently on the market, and people will always make the difference in a world where every company will use AI.

Beside the undoubted benefits (and sometimes competitive advantages) of using AI, there could be 2 risks (among others) in a not too distant future:

• an ever-increasing scarcity of people's expertise and experience
• the consequences of the power ratio between different AIs when most companies will massively use AI in their processes.

What does "Work with AI" mean?

If there's a smart and brilliant member in our team, we could make many choices... the worst could be "Let him/her do everything", the best could be to strive to keep up with him/her, learning, practicing and sharing continuously, trying to collaborate, no matter how big or small our contribution is (meaning, of course, that it's the best we can do). Collaboration and growth (at least, personal growth), always.

AI will be a strength for those who already have experience and expertise because they will know what to ask, they will have some awareness of what to delegate over time (it's a new world to explore and to experiment with), and, as important as the other points, they will know how to read what the AI will propose, with an intelligence and critical sense.

However, while we can strive to do our best and to collaborate and grow, there is a risk (in a not-too-distant future) that people will have a growing lack of expertise and experience in what should be their job and area of interest.

For those who won't have neither experience nor expertise (i.e., young people or people who are senior in other areas of work/knowledge but who are actually "junior" in the area they are currently working), the AI will of course be a strength... but it could also be a weakness, because they won't have the background knowledge (and "scars") to even understand the extension of the application of what the AI will suggest, so they might trust AI more than necessary, unconsciously taking high risks or weaknesses or obligations for the company.

One example. Some time ago I was discussing with a colleague about the difference between using of the word "include" and the word "consist of" in a technical specification (I also recently read a post about this as well. He didn't understand the difference, so I explained it to him and the risk/mistake he was taking by confusing the two expressions.

Ok, now take a young colleague, who is using the AI to write something... without experience and expertise he might not see the above difference and, trusting the AI aprioristically, he might not even realize that "those clauses proposed by AI" should be analyzed and modified with expertise, foresight and imagination (imagining possible scenarios of application)... and he may not even know how to do it because they he has never practiced, he has no "on the field" experience, he may have a mainly theoretical knowledge that has never really been put into practice because "there's neither need nor time for training and practice, we have the AIs doing all the work for us".

Another example I've just read about is the carefully use of "liable" instead of "responsible" within contract clauses and technical specifications... at a first look they could seem interchangeably words, but the nuance of language matters in a dispute between the parties, it's something that people without experience and expertise could not even see (and it's also the reason why you should never simply translate a contract or a specialized text using a generic translator!).

Never overlook the power ratio between different AIs

Let's take an example. Have you ever used an automatic translator (Google Translator, DeepL, the LinkedIn translator, etc.)? Are they all on the same level? Of course not, not in terms of "intelligence applied to" in translation and not for specialization! So why shouldn't commercially available AIs be in the same situation, some more "intelligent" or specialized than others... and, of course, some more expensive than others?

Let's look at a more complex situation. Speaking about Procurement, Tom Mills said in a recent post "Those saying Procurement will be replaced by A.I. don't understand what a mature Procurement team actually does"... I completely agree. Try to think about this situation: a company "A" has replaced its procurement with an AI and a supplier "B" has replaced its commercial structure with another AI... can you imagine what could a negotiation between the two companies (which will actually be "between the two AIs") might look like? When AI becomes ubiquitous, and both the customer and the supplier will have AI in their procurement department... who will "win"? It's likely that the winner will be the one who uses the more powerful and more specific AI... which also means who will pay more to get the better AI. We should always remember that AI is not a general concept and tool, there are more kinds and levels of AI, and all of them are private features put on the market with a price to pay to use them... and the more you invest, the more AI power, options, features you will have... the greater the probability that you will have to win in a negotiation if the other party will have the same or less AI features and investments.

Never stop investing in people

What will always make the difference between parties with similar AI "power" in their hands? People. People who know how to use AI, people who are able to "work with AI", people who are able to critically analyze, verify, review and manage what AI will suggest/produce.

Investing in people's knowledge and expertise, nurturing people's experience, taking care of your people and carefully recruiting new people, is and will always be the foundation and the treasure of a company.

I think that AI is like a sailing ship, with a good sailing ship you can cross the oceans, but without good people you are just at the mercy of the wind.

What do you think? Add your thoughts and comments ?

Share it, help to spread information and ideas ??

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#micheleromano