What does AI driven even means?
The world is seemingly going through an AI revolution now and there is no way to stop it. Almost every company is now aggressively pushing AI into their products to create a competitive advantage(?). I guess, the business leaders are scared to repeat the past of examples of Kodak and Blockbuster. Not following the trends made these companies to lose relevance. Modern business today is about making profit and that is achieved by staying relevant. AI is the most trendy, shiny thing at the moment. But is this what we want? Is this what the humanity needs? These are the questions nobody seems to ask or care about. It is about driving business, productivity, and gaining market shares. If competitors are doing it - we must follow.
I work at a manufacturing company that works with home appliances, and still here AI seems to be put at the center of attention. AI in the oven to tell when the food is ready, AI in the fridge to inform you of what you can make with the products you have at home or that you're soon out of milk.
There is a desire to be data and AI driven. What does it even mean? Many decisions here are not even made with the data in mind. I see a lot of conflicting information in my day to day regards being data driven, yet the desire to be it continues to be strong. Then how can we be AI driven when I need to question what it even means?
Working in HR makes this situation a little bit tricker because the sentiment in the industry is that HR should be in the center of decision and policy making around AI. Why? Because AI changes so much about how we work. Some people feel triggered that they will become redundant, changing processes means change resistance which is especially hard when people don't understand why the changes are necessary in the first place, collaboration suddenly is much more isolated because we can outsource brainstorming to AI and not chat with collogues. This is just the top layer of the transformation that many workplaces are going through and companies are not really questioning the impact of it. Because after all profit comes first, even in companies that say that people are the priority.
Last year I was heavily using and relying on AI to help me to write emails, polish presentations and brainstorm. Basically considering it my colleague in the individual tasks. I even enrolled in a pilot to explore more advanced versions of the LLM and understand the advantages of it. What I learned is that it can do much, especially on the automation side. It can be my personal assistant, make sure I don't miss anything and stay on top of all the tasks. But to be honest, it made me more and more anxious and overwhelmed. I don't receive so much emails that I couldn't read and respond to them myself. I consider myself being very good at written communication, so polishing my emails just make them sound fake and not so genuine. Adjusting the tone so it is just enough robotic-corporate-polite? Not worth it to me.
The turning point of my skeptical attitude of AI was a simple email from a colleague that was clearly written by AI. And I hated it. I still think about it and it makes me sick. The level of fakeness and shallowness these LLMs bring to relationships either personal or professional is very invisible but damaging. I see this being a huge problem in a long term, especially with problems of loneliness and isolation. Of course, this doesn't stop me to use LLM. I still use it to outsource more complex tasks but I've stopped using it to do communication to others or summarize stuff I could do myself. The productivity gains for me is not strong enough to risk my brain cells to think, learn and question. I will continue to write my own messages and emails. I will put effort to learn better writing and use this blog as a practice space. I will be mindful of my usage of AI. After all, I want to live in a world that challenges me to think and advocate for myself, and hopefully inspire others to do a similar thing.