WHO IS PACING THIS RACE?
Christine Haskell, Ph.D.
Simplifying the Messy Middle of Data & Leadership | Advisor, Analyst & Speaker (ex-Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon) | Author of ‘Driving Data’ Series | Transforming Organizations Through Data Culture & Governance
Since the launch of #OpenAI and #Copilot, we have been discussing these tools as “#digitalassistants” even though they are machines and not so much tools. Language takes time to settle, as it often does when we go through major paradigm shifts.
This “machine-coworker” is starting to take on very entry-level tasks. It augments entry-level knowledge worker jobs like call center representatives with chatbots, integrated voice response (IVR), or intelligent voice response—very early stages of customer service. It shows up in basic recommendation engines for content.
The idea of having a more freeform machine co-worker with whom we can ask natural language questions and who can anticipate our needs is just starting. However, this requires a higher level of digital fluency for us to really find a groove with these machine-coworkers and not be overtaken by them. As I came up in my career, we were taught to “automate ourselves out of a job” to do the next thing. Our skills, desire for change, and needs of and interest in the business dictated the pace. Today, the pace of #automation may not be dictated by us. There is a real risk of jobs going away before we have thought through the next set of problems to solve. If we cannot see around corners, we have not considered our upcoming transition.
Add to this, there are still a lot of misunderstandings about how data works. As a function, #IT is still a black box to many #businessfunctions, and people outside of #datateams have little insight into the #datasupplychain and the #truecostofdata as it applies to addressing their #businessquestions.
Many misconceptions exist about how machines can or cannot learn and what that means. Understanding how machines and machine-coworkers learn and framing it in more human terms makes it more accessible for people. We must do some overall digital fluency work to prepare people for that, but we must also ask if we are out over our skiis.
Who is setting the pace for change? Is it the economy’s voracious appetite for profit from business models dependent on hypecycles? Or is it us truly going after the problems that genuinely need to be solved—like education, recidivism, workforce retraining, healthcare, climate change, refugee management, immigration, homelessness—and the litany of #worldproblems making their way to our front doors and kitchen tables.
The most important thing to remember is that no matter how much augmentation these machines enable and all the tremendous progress they will bring, there will continue to be limits. Humans have remarkable capabilities to deal with and adapt to change; there will not be an ‘end of human work.’
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COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT HOW MACHINES LEARN
MACHINES CAN LEARN:
MACHINES STRUGGLE TO LEARN:
Christine Haskell, Ph.D. is the author of Driving Your Self-Reflection (2021), Driving Results Through Others (2021), Driving Data Projects: A Comprehensive Guide (2023), and The Thinking Practice: What craftspeople can teach us about problem-solving in the advent of AI (pending, 2024).
She teaches graduate courses in informatics at Washington State University’s Carson School of Business and as a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington’s iSchool.