Artificial What???

By The Phantom

Artificial What???

So, we keep hearing all this stuff about artificial intelligence (AI). Here we are, talking about artificial intelligence, and we haven’t gotten the real thing figured out yet. I heard that artificial intelligence is what you got when a blond dyes her hair dark. I told that to a blond friend. It didn’t go well.

Then there’s AI’s cousin (second cousin?), machine learning (ML). Kinda reminds me of this story I heard on the radio when I was young, which predicted the Internet way back in the 1950s (I told you I was young then, real young). Seems like some other old codger has written about the same show before, so there may be at least two of us still kickin’ from way back then. Anyway, it was about these machines you could buy for your home called “logics,” which were hooked up so they could all talk to each other, and any question you asked your logic, it would query all the other logics and get you the answer. Anyway, the story was about the only renegade logic in the world (okay, so not quite the Internet), which made all other logics go crazy.

So what’ll we do with this new-fangled stuff that is being delivered to us? Well, for starters, we might use it to replace some of those interactions with human customer service representatives. That’s it! We can program the AI machine to ask the caller to state his problem in a few words. Then we can have the machine come up with all these choices that have nothing to do with the problem described. Make sure we don’t give the customer the option of talking to a real person. It’ll drive the customer mad! Oh wait, that’s already been done. Multiple times.

Maybe that last was written a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it does bring up an important concept that people of all generations seem to keep forgetting: Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD do something. AI/ML and whatever other new technologies, should actually be accomplishing something GOOD, for both industry and people. All too often we have been hoodwinked into thinking that new equals better. Ain’t necessarily so! Seriously, we have seen instances of something new that somebody sitting in some ivory tower somewhere thought was the cat’s meow. May have even gotten a bonus or at least an atta-boy from the other ivory towerists. Then when it finally was deployed to the yearning masses, it was shown to be a big, fat bust. Hummm, don’t I recall some story of my very youngest age, something about a king and some new clothes, that exemplifies the phenomenon pretty well? Guess it’s not something new, but why do we have such a hard time applying a lesson to the next big thing?

Now by no means do I intend to pan all new advancements in AI/ML (or whatever improbable letter combination comes next); there are true advancements that can be really good for everyone involved. By all means, let us embrace them. The old Haunt is merely saying that we need to look at every new bit of “progress” through a skeptical lens to make sure it really is progress, for all shareholders.

Oh, lemme give you another example of something that was perceived at first as progress, which has surely frustrated you at some point in your life. Have you ever called a manufacturer’s help line, only to have it answered by a human (good, very good), but, uh, one who insisted on starting with “is the product plugged in?” Obviously the person you were talking to was reading from a computer screen, and the person who developed said computer screen hadn’t anticipated a caller who was already 20 steps into logical troubleshooting before picking up the phone. Makes you mad to be in that position, doesn’t it? Makes me mad, too. If I’m having trouble with a product, of course I’ve already triple-checked the power and done a bunch of other trouble-shooting steps. And I probably know more about the general functioning of the product than does the person on the other end of the call reading a computer screen. But you get the idea; before we deploy something new, even if it does have one of these magical combinations of letters, let’s be sure it is going to be an improvement. Not only help the bottom line of the outfit deploying it, but also folks using it. In other words, be skeptical, don’t cut testing short, and make it prove its worth to all parties. In real-world scenarios.

The Phantom
the.phantom@youwontfindmeanywhere.com

You never know when The Phantom is standing right beside you. Sometimes he is in a meeting with you or walking the floor at your favorite cable show. Sometimes he’s hanging with the suits and other times with the front liners. But be assured, The Phantom sees all, The Phantom knows all and, most importantly, The Phantom tells all.

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