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The Real Test Of AI Is The Human One

Every new invention looks obvious in hindsight.

Electricity… the printing press… the internet.
But at the time?
Few really knew what it’s for… or were using it in ways the mass used it when it hit scale.
The printing press wasn’t invented to create novels.
I’m guessing Edison didn’t imagine Netflix.
The early web looked like a clunky screen of text files that were not interconnected.

Now here we are with AI… which, in and of itself, is difficult to define.

And the same mistake is happening… again.
We think we know what it’s for.
Students using it to cheat on essays.
Workers using it to write their emails (and business plans).
Institutions banning it out of fear of potential.
Individuals demanding it not be used in creative work.

But if history teaches us anything… we don’t actually know what this thing is good (or bad) for yet.

We are not even at stage one (by my accounts).
The invention (or evolution of something that has been around for a while) is here.
The knowledge and conjecture is spreading (which, I think is both healthy and needed).
But the products and real adaptations?
Still very early days.

I love this insight from Tim O’Reilly in his article, We Are Only Beginning to Understand How to Use AI…

When Google Docs arrived, people thought it was just a Word file in the cloud… on the internet.
It took some time for us to realize the revolution wasn’t in the file… it was in the collaboration.
Multiple people typing into the same document at once.
A new process, not just a new tool.
What’s the AI version of ‘multiple people typing in the same doc’ that we haven’t yet discovered?

AI feels like that moment… with much greater (and grander) use cases and scale.

We’re still dragging it into old workflows, when what’s required is rethinking the workflows themselves.
Schools are banning it.
Companies are banning/limiting it.
Regulators are debating how to throttle/understand it.

We should be cautious… and we should be cautiously optimistic.

Because when we dismiss or shut down innovation at this stage, we choke off the tinkering, the iteration, the leapfrogging that shows us what it’s actually for.
We make the same mistake we made with the early internet… forcing it into old models instead of imagining what new ones it might make possible.

I’m not discounting the risk or the possibility for mass disruption.

Of course, there will be risks.
Of course, there will be bad actors.
Of course, there be a slew of new problems.
Every disruption has its fire-burns, internet-scams, social-media-mobs moment.

But dismissing it outright?

That only guarantees we miss the chance to build what’s good… better… what’s next.

So what do we do?

We tinker.
We plan.
We test.
We stay open to being surprised.
We stay on top of it to ensure that it’s aligned, safe and for the better of our angels (as much as we can).

Because maybe AI doesn’t just make us faster… smarter…

Maybe it makes us… different.
And maybe (like every other disruption we once faced/feared) that difference will define the next era of business, culture and connection.

The real risk isn’t that AI changes us… it’s that we fail to change with it.

This is what Trudie Mason and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · The Real Test Of AI Is The Human One – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.