I read a white paper the other day from a company that is making a big effort to lead the AI transition for many large corporations. It was, of course, a huge hype story. However, seeing how enthusiastically “technology executives” are jumping on this bandwagon, and knowing how clueless these people usually are (there are exceptions, of course), this is a disaster scenario we can follow in real time.
What is going wrong here? A technology, useful in itself, is being praised as if it were the spinning wheel that produces gold. In the hands of people who have already made such a mess of their data landscape this can only go wrong.
They are bowing three times to the gods of security, privacy, and transparency, but that is obviously a sham. As part of a gold rush, they are not going to fix what they already don’t have in order.
“AI will multiply the return on your investments” is the promise. But it will exponentially increase your risks if you unleash this new magical machine on your current data, with all its flaws and its current privacy and security problems. If you don’t master that now, things can only go wrong. Something like “sorcerer’s apprentice”…
What should you do? First, get your house in order before you unleash AI. Consider what you want to get out of the AI and therefore what the minimum data set it needs is. Also consider what you can do with the results, how accurate will they be, and how will the results translate to another environment where you want to use it. As long as you can’t answer those questions, it’s better to first use your AI investments to answer them before you start shelling out big bucks to AI companies…
If you’d like me to give a balanced talk about AI at your event or company, LET’S TALK
