…. to be more creative and make innovation more rewarding
When your texting device suggests words to help you finish your sentence—this is Artificial Intelligence. Or when you’ve played around with audio transcription devices like Voice Memo on iPhones or the Otter app—this is also AI. Other applications include Midjourney (image generation from language), MusicLM by Google (music generation from text), etc.
Artificial intelligence is a field that combines “computer science and robust datasets to enable problem solving ”. The first wave of automation and AI mainly affected blue collar workers – which caused some anxiety and the elimination of factory jobs – as robots replaced people on assembly lines. But this latest iteration of AI affects white collar personnel, knowledge workers, those who exchange value based on the currency of our ideas, etc.
Galit Ariel, an augmented reality expert, refers to this as a heterotopia – there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news first. Many jobs will become irrelevant and thus require reskilling and upskilling to prepare for the new jobs that are created associated with using artificial intelligence. The good news is that as basic tasks get done by AI and bots, the opportunity is to redesign work and define different metrics for productivity that will make room for what makes us uniquely human. Think of what a workplace looks like where technology is not only doing mundane tasks, but it is also prompting us to engage in our intuition, emotions, and creativity.
To move forward requires a mindset shift
To help in the mindset shift by developing new ways of looking at things and new thinking to benefit by these enabling technologies, learn how to create new value, develop strong look ahead skills, be very aware of the changing business landscape and social environment, recognize opportunity, be proactive and better manage change, ask good questions, learn fast, be willing to try, etc. An example of facilitating the mindset shift is positively responding to “ an opportunity or prompt to cross the chasm of fear or uncertainty ”. This is essential to have a “ Growth Mindset “. With this, AI tools, a healthy curiosity, being open-minded, having the ability to innovate for impact by delivering new value and a great User Experience, etc. enables organizations to make good on new opportunities with new digital services, increase relevance and revenue, etc. – for competitive advantage and to have a better future.
With this, there is a need to be aware of the changes and challenges that occur with the growing presence of AI into society –
- How do we leverage existing people’s capabilities to create new value going forward ?
- How do we recognize and reward the Innovators of new digital services that meaningfully improve outcomes ?
- How do we ensure the people and organization adhere to ethics, respect cultural values, are responsible and accountable, etc. ?
- How do we prepare ourselves to not be threatened by or reject AI, generative artificial intelligence, Extended Reality, and other newer technologies ?
To help with understanding, while functions such as Chat GPT could take away some work of humans, recognize it’s neither a dystopian quagmire or utopian panacea – but rather a tool to raise the bar to better explore and create opportunities to assist in realizing potential – you, your colleagues, and the organization. And recognize this is simply the latest iteration of infusing technology into business and society that has been going on for centuries ! Only now imagination, creativity and innovation have a powerful new tool in AI and ChatGPT to make things happen – sooner than later – if responsibly and thoughtfully adopted. Further, recognize the technology and algorithms still need humans who know how to frame questions, provide better context, as well as to assess the merits and intelligence of the output. For example, the better you are at asking questions (a catalyst for building your creative capacity), the more effective is ChatGPT.
Here are four ways to think about generative AI as a co-creator :
- AI as a collaborator to spark our imagination. Whatever apps like ChatGPT spit out are only the starting place.
- AI as a catalyst to help us learn to ask better questions. With Chat GPT, questions are the inputs, so you still have to be excellent at question framing.
- Integrity remains supreme. You must be smart and diligent about doing your background research. For example, Chat GPT’s training data is only through 2021. So definitely do not try to write your next document only using ChatGPT.
- and by becoming skilled in the above – AI improves your critical thinking, increases your value, and expands your opportunities.
Be aware that big data and tools such as Chat GPT are good at revealing patterns and associations – but they typically don’t understand the meaning or implications of the patterns. That is in part because of the way ChatGPT functions. It is scrubbing the internet that is only representative of the people who use it. Therefore, the World Wide Web is not full of inputs from every single person from every tiny village and corner of the world. Thus, its inputs are limited. As Seth Godin wrote in his January 6, 2023 blog, “ GPT and other AI tools don’t actually know anything. They’re pattern matchers and pattern extenders. And those patterns are called culture ”.
Further, people are good at ingesting big data (the bird’s eye view) and deep data (the worm’s eye view) to have deep observations, interpersonal interactions, context and story. Plus, an intuitive understanding of how this will impact us – today and tomorrow. Because of these qualities, humans have an important role to play in how the future unfolds !
So, with the “ I ” in AI representing INTELLIGENCE and IMAGINATION, we’re able to drive both.
April 27, 2023 – by Figure 8 Thinking / CAIL CAIL Innovation commentary
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