My Never List

I’m not a futurist and my interest in science fiction is probably about average. I also try not to be a Luddite when it comes to embracing new technologies. And I try not to be a sensationalist, an alarmist, or a conspiratorialist when the conversation turns to AI. Actually, if I’m any “ist” at all I hope it’s a realist and an optimist, even if that’s challenging these days.

A growing number of news stories have told us about how neural-net technology and artificial intelligence could lead to the best or worst of us, and nobody reasonable is certain which it will be. So should we fear AI, embrace it, or grudgingly accept it? Unfortunately these questions take longer to answer than the rate at which this technology grows.

Now, I’m looking at all this AI stuff from my little corner of the world and, as I’ve already indicated, it’s not my specialty or even of great interest beyond the big picture questions that no one knows the answers to yet. However, practical considerations are popping up in my industry as in others. That, plus a couple of articles I read in recent days have precipitated this morning’s post.

The first article is from Axios and is titled, “Behind the Curtain: What AI architects fear most in 2024”. The information is summarized and is a quick if disturbing read. Check it out because, as one estimate suggests, by 2025 90+% of online content may have been created by AI. There’s more to the article but think about using an Internet where most or perhaps substantially all of what we see could be fake (meaning produced by AI versus by a human). Writing, images, you name it. Or perhaps we’ll have grown even more used to it by then…

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/08/ai-fears-deepfake-misinformation

The second article talks about the recent launch of something startling, a pendant directly tied to an AI-driven platform that could change the way you interact with the world. Or maybe it’s a looming fad that’s doomed to failure, but I don’t think so. I honestly don’t know what to make of this, so you can look for yourself. And the article links to a couple videos about the technology that are worth watching.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/9/23953901/humane-ai-pin-launch-date-price-openai

My main point with sharing these articles is as a leadup to something I refer to as my Never List. There’s lots of change all around related to AI, but there are things I’ll never do as part of my work for you. Instead of a line drawn in the sand, these are etched into stone.

I’ll Never…

Use AI to screen or respond to your emails. I know this offers cost savings and lots of businesses are excited about it, but I’m not going there. Every email from me or someone on my staff will be written by a human, not a bot.

Use AI to generate blog posts. This is another obvious time saver and time equals money, yada, yada. But I’ll always write my own posts. If I ever get completely blocked, and I’ve felt close to that multiple times, I’ll either write nothing or leverage links to other stories. It will be authentically me, for better or worse.

Use AI, or any third party for that matter, to manage your money. Advisors hiring others to manage a client’s money and then playing it off as being managed by the advisor has long been a problem in my industry. I’ve always chafed at it for a variety of reasons. I’ll never go that route even if AI makes it cheaper because it can never be better, at least in my view. Human intelligence, empathy, and judgement are important parts of the work I do and shouldn’t be delegated to some outside investment shop and certainly not to AI networks.

That said, I don’t fear technology and am not anti-technology either, as I mentioned already. Instead, I enjoy innovation and have reaped major benefits from the growth of the Internet, cloud computing, and so forth. I try to leverage this tech in my personal and professional life while respecting its immense power, its limitations, and its risks. We’d all probably say something similar.

However, the articles above and others like them make me feel uncomfortable in ways that are hard to express. I don’t like the idea of being inundated with fake stuff and the idea of handing over too much of my life to the growth of AI is, well, let’s just say it’s unappealing. We can and should continue to use the amazing tools available to us to enhance our lives and the lives of those around us. But we should also be careful about how far we’re willing to let all this go. That’s easier to define in business than in life, of course.

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