Randy Karnes served as CEO of CU*Answers and its multiple offspring in four decades. He led during multiple technology revolutions.
He posted these comments on the role of AI and machine learning in general, responding to yesterday’s blog written by Playground.
AI and the Author-Artist’s Return on Work
Automation will be able to replace the delivery of such things by emulating the output from stored themes, patterned phrases, and just like students of millions of expressions of facts AI will simply string output together – a modern day scribe, typist, or plagiarist.
But while the output of work product for the economic return on work – the real return is for the author’s joy – the pride in the intellect on display – the heart in the translations of life’s learning and ideas interpreted. AI is a long way from capturing personal returns on being the owner of the work.
It will still be to the artist to generate the moment of insight that sparks a genuine response amongst the noise of billions of expressions generated by endless data, tireless machines, and endless networks.
For all the noise it is the simplest of silence inspired thoughts–for thought that lights the soul on fire.
The Challenge for Today’s Technology Managers
But I am not sure many consumers today love the work to be the authors or manufacturers of value beyond telling machines to pump it out.
When you considered that my career changed from tech that readied the day for humans to interact around financial service delivery to one that where no humans are needed for 80-90% of the transactions or advice, you can see that less and less value generators or authors of ideas are needed.
Thinkers and dreamers no longer need apply.
Financial Tech was an exciting space of invention, creation, and innovation but more and more it is becoming simply a world of operation, maintenance, and tweaks.
Human workers are simply the lubricant of established systems today and mesmerized to overvalue the tech to be consumed and their role in supporting it – inflated on both sides of the artificial templated transactions.