Demystifying AI

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There is no question that AI is the hot topic, and has been since 2023. 199 of the companies listed in the S&P 500 mentioned AI in their first quarter earnings updates in 2024. As we have seen with previous technological advances, questions and debate regarding the impact of AI on our lives and working environments rages. However, it is important to recognise while we are seeing AI applied more broadly and increasingly effectively, it is not new having been used in medical imaging since the 1980’s, spam filters for your email over the last 20 years and the algorithms in promoting content in social media are all well established examples of AI, just to name a few.

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So, to start with, what is AI?

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Scaremongerers talking about AI promote images of Skynet from Terminator or Mr. Smith from The Matrix, of sentient beings with learning rates we could only dream of, to be feared and avoided. They highlight the replacement of authors, writers, painters and artists, of administrators and roles with high levels of repetition by tomorrow. In reality, effective current iterations and uses of AI are as pattern recognition tools. This is not to undermine AI, as a big part of what and how we learn as humans is through pattern recognition, and AI is proving that it can do many of these repetitive tasks with far greater efficiency than we can, which provides exciting opportunities. 

A key challenge for AI is that it is only as good as the patterns and information it is fed. While debate heats up about the use of available content to feed AI models, particularly driven by those who have already scraped content from across the internet, we continue to see the limitations of current AI models in content creation. The additional appendages, merging of beings and inhuman movements in AI generated video content are the best examples of this. While rapid advances are being seen, there is a need for organisations to understand the limitations and potential risks with use of AI - although incredibly efficient at repetitive tasks, they can be prone to error or misunderstanding. 

Where AI continues to demonstrate benefits today are in the efficiency gains. Organisations who are first to adopt and effectively implement solutions in this space are at a clear advantage as even ignoring the potential cost saving, it enables more of your team to work to their potential and at top of their scope or opportunities to offer more flexible working arrangements (ie 4 day weeks) improving retention. 

So boiling it down, 

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• AI are computer systems or software that learns through pattern recognition.
• It is not to be feared but does come with risks which need to be understood 
• So offer incredible opportunities for productivity and efficiency gains

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