The Real Test Of AI Is The Human One

Every new invention looks obvious in hindsight.

Electricity… the printing press… the internet.
But at the time?
Few really knew what it’s for… or were using it in ways the mass used it when it hit scale.
The printing press wasn’t invented to create novels.
I’m guessing Edison didn’t imagine Netflix.
The early web looked like a clunky screen of text files that were not interconnected.

Now here we are with AI… which, in and of itself, is difficult to define.

And the same mistake is happening… again.
We think we know what it’s for.
Students using it to cheat on essays.
Workers using it to write their emails (and business plans).
Institutions banning it out of fear of potential.
Individuals demanding it not be used in creative work.

But if history teaches us anything… we don’t actually know what this thing is good (or bad) for yet.

We are not even at stage one (by my accounts).
The invention (or evolution of something that has been around for a while) is here.
The knowledge and conjecture is spreading (which, I think is both healthy and needed).
But the products and real adaptations? 
Still very early days.

I love this insight from Tim O’Reilly in his article, We Are Only Beginning to Understand How to Use AI…

When Google Docs arrived, people thought it was just a Word file in the cloud… on the internet.
It took some time for us to realize the revolution wasn’t in the file… it was in the collaboration.
Multiple people typing into the same document at once.
A new process, not just a new tool.
What’s the AI version of ‘multiple people typing in the same doc’ that we haven’t yet discovered?

AI feels like that moment… with much greater (and grander) use cases and scale. 

We’re still dragging it into old workflows, when what’s required is rethinking the workflows themselves.
Schools are banning it.
Companies are banning/limiting it.
Regulators are debating how to throttle/understand it.

We should be cautious… and we should be cautiously optimistic.

Because when we dismiss or shut down innovation at this stage, we choke off the tinkering, the iteration, the leapfrogging that shows us what it’s actually for.
We make the same mistake we made with the early internet… forcing it into old models instead of imagining what new ones it might make possible.

I’m not discounting the risk or the possibility for mass disruption. 

Of course, there will be risks.
Of course, there will be bad actors.
Of course, there be a slew of new problems.
Every disruption has its fire-burns, internet-scams, social-media-mobs moment.

But dismissing it outright?

That only guarantees we miss the chance to build what’s good… better… what’s next.

So what do we do?

We tinker.
We plan.
We test.
We stay open to being surprised.
We stay on top of it to ensure that it’s aligned, safe and for the better of our angels (as much as we can). 

Because maybe AI doesn’t just make us faster… smarter…

Maybe it makes us… different.
And maybe (like every other disruption we once faced/feared) that difference will define the next era of business, culture and connection.

The real risk isn’t that AI changes us… it’s that we fail to change with it.

This is what Trudie Mason and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · The Real Test Of AI Is The Human One – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.