Lifting the hood on AI: the business mindmap
**Quick update on 1st Feb 2024**
I have met several AI practitioners (PM, coders, data scientists) in the run-up to Christmas. The most extraordinary insight I got from them came from a coder at the end of a MeetUp meeting. This guy told me that he was looking to retrain within 5 years as… a pastry chef. Why oh why, I asked? Well, in 5 years time, in his view, AI will code itself. And he feel he will become redundant. On the other hand, a pastry chef is never going to be out of work.
This goes to show that AI is moving at such an exponential rate that even its practitioners are unsure how fast the tsunami is going to hit.
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Initially posted on linkedin http://tinyurl.com/ysy3zcat
You hear about it ad infinitum. AI. Like the invention of electricity, it’s about to change the world.
Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies writes: “Artificial intelligence is not a futuristic concept; it’s here now, and it’s changing the way we live, work, and do business.”
Many of us have already played with ChatGPT to have a sense of “what it is, what it does”. It is not perfect yet and it is quite easy to think this is still a bit of a gimmick. But it is moving forward. Very, very fast. AI is now writing its own code, which tells us its development will follow an exponential curve.
If you are a translator, a financial analyst, a customer care agent or work in legal, you probably start feeling a bit uneasy about the impact of specialist AI on your livelihood.
We know that businesses with vast datastores – think insurers, banks, online retailers – have used AI for well over ten years to predict behaviours and risks or to price services. We now hear that 30% of work hours will be replaced by AI in 2030 (McKinsey, https://shorturl.at/ciEU5). Ouch!
It is an uncomfortable question: is AI going to eat my breakfast? When? How? Will I see it coming?
These days, I am spending quite a bit of time with AI techs in order to lift the hood and understand more precisely where and how AI is going to impact businesses.
I have seen demos of AI engines capable of scanning and pointing out weaknesses in a commercial contract in minutes. After filming a short generic sequence on an iPhone, generative AI can create a very convincing video of your CEO delivering the company new employee onboarding message in 12 languages. All this is not good news if you earn your crust as a legal professional, a producer, a cameraman or a dubbing voice.
My most surprising finding so far is this: absolutely all businesses say they will have to retrain the workforce for AI, but no one can tell exactly how. Will we all have to learn a souped-up version of SQL? Will we all become Python or R coders? (answer: probably not). Will there be a standard AI interface app – in the way Excel or Word became the de facto standard in the early 90s?
This mindmap is a quick summary of the state of play as I see it.
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