Why do we pave the calf path?
Stephen Redmond
AI Visionary | Head of Data Analytics and AI at BearingPoint Ireland. Delivering real business value to our clients by harnessing the transformative power of data and AI.
My colleague, Jason Warnke, recently posted on the dangers of using future tech to just perform old behaviours.
I completely agree! I have written before about this IT phenomenon and warning against using AI to pave the calf path.
When thinking about this phenomenon, and wondering why it is so prevalent, I am reminded of a story that I heard some time ago…
The story goes that the gods are observing the Earth and notice a particular man who is struggling along a path, carefully carrying a load of firewood. The man is so impoverished that his boots are falling apart and held together with string.
The minor gods plead with the senior god to help this poor man. The senior god replies that the man is not ready to be helped. Please, asked the minor gods, just send him some gold to make his life better! Gold is easy, said the senior god and clicked her fingers. At once, a pile of gold appeared on the path in front of the man! He carefully stepped over it so as not to damage his boots, struggling to make sure that he did not drop a piece of firewood.
Are you so busy keeping your old boots together, making sure that you keep carrying the loads that you have always carried, that you miss the opportunities that appear on the path? If someone proposes paving the path, do you think about the lower impact on the damaged boots and how much easier it will be to carry the firewood??
Perhaps that is why we pave so many calf paths.
For men are prone to go it blind
领英推荐
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
- from The Calf Path, by Samuel Foss
Accenture Analytics & AI Leadership | Award Winning Data Scientist | Curiosity Driven Researcher | Passionate about Advancing AI
1 年Nice! Thanks Stephen Redmond ??
”Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” Chief Digitalization Officer | Healthcare Innovation | Digital Transformation Leader at Karolinska University Hospital
3 年Funny with looking back at how things worked well and implementing that in new tech. Like how Everyone in VR is trying to create button based virtual Keyboards in VR for text input. I dont yet know the better option, it is still out there, but I am starting to think maybe it is to look further back, before keyboards came. Perhaps it is better to just give the VR users a pen and paper? With some AI it might be more efficient finally? ??♂?
Data Cathedral Architect, Chief Question Officer
3 年#VirtualReality offers us soooooo many possibilities, but we will need to un-learn our "real world" training and think differently.
Data Cathedral Architect, Chief Question Officer
3 年After living in Atlanta, GA for several years my wife and I both found ourselves asking person after person ... why in the world does this road criss cross this other road over and over again. It was years before someone explained that your title was literally the reason. They simply paved over the paths that farmers/cowboys had used transporting cattle.