English | EN 
For someone who doesn’t feel like they are working at the cutting edge of the AI revolution, I am surprised it has developed into such a strong topic for my blogging. Yet there can be no doubt it is here to stay, and it is in fact having a massive surge of activity so far in 2024.
There is still considerable debate in the media as to how much value AI is adding so far. My recent expeditions into this Brave New World have given me stark reminders that the answers AI gives do require human intervention and review before they can be used. This is reflected, I believe, by many of the various AI product launches bearing the name “Copilot,” indicating that the AI is an assistant and, in aviation speak, the final authority lies with the “Captain”. Or, to put it another way, you and I as the Responsible Human.
This was highlighted to me as I became a certified practitioner in one of the copilot offerings. Whilst I was able to simply ask the AI assistant to create something for me, it was down to me to make sense of it. I could not simply blindly accept the changes as to do so would break the solution. In other words, I had to intervene. To frame this in terms of the quotation below, I was at least entirely doing the laundry and the dishes.
“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
Joanna Maciejewska
What I would say was fantastic was how the AI empowered me to create something working with incredible ease. It easily filled in the gap in my knowledge between having an idea for a product, in this case a simple website, and the skills required to create prototype in minutes, quite possibly exceeding the realms of being a Minimal Viable Product. Yes, in minutes.
Yet given a more creative example, an AI was recently challenged to create a Country song. Based on the information available to the AI it did indeed create a song and the style was, as far as I can tell, convincingly “Country”, I think. Joanna Maciejewska will be relieved to know the AI did what AIs can do sometimes, and failed spectacularly in terms of the lyrics. Dolly Parton is safe for a few more years!
Back to our coding example (although also true for the musical example!), it is important to note that the AI was able to do the core, boilerplate things quickly and easily, and these could be done by almost anyone with only a few hours of training in using the AI. I would, however, offer a cautionary tale from experience that we could end up creating an endless supply of these things, and the AI becomes like a modern-day Excel: accessible to anyone and creating fantastic prototypes which should not, in my opinion, be used operationally in the business without first being productized and industrialized.
As a secondary point, I would also consider the fact that even as the responsible adult, or the “Captain” in creating a fairly simple website, is that I was not suddenly empowered as a developer. Yes, with help I achieved a long-term goal that had eluded me in creating something. But I was still floundering at the helm in terms of being a developer. The skills required to make AI’s contribution useful and tangible were still beyond me. As much as it pains me to say this as a die-hard tester, we will still need developers for the foreseeable future!
There is also a risk of an explosion of AI “things” being created and, in some cases, no one knowing if they are safe.
For instance, what if the implemented idea creates a neat portal for a malicious actor to access critical corporate data? Or how about if the content can quickly and easily be changed to present reputationally damaging information? Another scenario might be to present an ill-fated promotion that can be exploited to cause the sort of negative financial impact experienced by Hoover when they offered free flights with each vacuum cleaner purchased.
While we are still in the early days of AI becoming a mainstream part of our daily operations and business as usual within our corporate lives, I am proud to be part of an organization which is striving not only to be an industry leader in AI, but also to do this ethically. It’s a core part of our approach.
