#MeWriting I stumbled on a LinkedIn post from a connection, Emmanuel Maggiori (link), today. The post is short enough to quote in full here:
There’s a large market for “good enough” work (as opposed to excellent work). This includes for example, writing SEO-driven articles or designing banner images for blogs. High quality and thoroughness don’t matter in those cases. This is the work that will be most affected by AI, as people will use AI instead of hiring humans to do it.
This is very similar to my own view that generative AI is good for generative things and blank page filling.
It’s easy for AI enthusiasts to dismiss what Mr. Maggiori or I are suggesting are good uses of AI as “not worth anyone’s attention” or “minor use cases”. They are worth attention and they’re not minor! Imagine the greater AI industry wants to pave over the entire United States. I think that gets the scale of their ambition right. Blank page filling use cases, comparably, want to pave over California, Oregon, Washington, and Rhode Island for good measure. These use cases are very ambitious, with plenty of good work to go around for anyone who wants to attack them! You don’t have to pretend LLMs can think to keep busy.
Meanwhile, 95% of AI projects are failing. They’re failing because they are too ambitious. They’re pretending that “AI” is intelligent, thus ignoring the “effective” side of the coin.
The AI Super Power works like this:
- You know what tasks generative AI is actually good at.
- You have the chill to not endorse tasks it’s not good at.
I know plenty of people on the “critic” side who claim that AI isn’t capable of doing the things it’s good at, or who rake me over the coals for wanting to use it for tasks humans will not even do because the tasks are too low value. I can’t help you if you can’t recognize the value of processes you can replicate with 100% success at home.
I have a very good friend of almost 40 years. He will probably end up reading this some time. Two years ago, when I was trying to explain what AI is good for, I came up with a one-word description: “delight”. It’s consistent with what I’ve settled on. My friend then started coming to me with tasks that AI is not good for, claiming they would be delightful to him.
I won’t call that intellectual dishonest or purposely ignoring my point, because I’m kind. I will call it not having requisite chill. This wasn’t two old friends bantering over beers trying to solve the world’s problems. We were trying to find a good business idea for AI. As of now, we still try. If we ever settled on an idea that didn’t meet the chill requirement, I would waste a lot of time and he would lose a lot of money. Funny enough, it would also be my fault when we fail.
I do not know a lot of people who actually have this super power. Prior to reading and commenting on Mr. Maggiori’s post, then writing this article, I hadn’t framed it this directly. I have felt like I was on Brad Island with a strange set of beliefs that are difficult to share with, let alone inculcate into others. I know that it takes around 6 months with non-technical folks I engage deeply with on AI topics to move them into the vicinity of Brad Island. People’s natural priors of trust in technology and faith in “artificial intelligence” are hard eggs to crack.
If you accept what I claim about this being a super power, I can help you and your company. I don’t just arrive with a vision. I have actual software that will help you understand AI and develop that same super power. Message me on LinkedIn if you’re interested.
I would appreciate your reactions and comments on my LinkedIn repost.