This seems like a timely topic ahead of Labor Day weekend! I had some thoughts on Geoffrey Moore’s as always insightful piece on Making Peace with Generative AI. So I am posting them here instead of leaving a lengthy comment. I am in general agreement, like many of us, that GPT/AI is a blessing than a curse. If you haven’t read Geoff’s article, I highly suggest doing that first.
GPT Hallucinations
Geoff acknowledges the issue of veracity with AI and propensity of making mistakes but also seems to imply that we should accept it because we humans make mistakes too and that we are not looking for the gospel truth.
Are we too quick too soon to lower the threshold of accuracy that we have always expected from computing just because it releases “trapped value” somewhere else in the short term? I am reminded of the brouhaha around the Pentium FPU (floating point unit) bug even when most people would not have encountered it or be affected by it.
Are we using human fallibility and our own contentious relationship with the truth as an excuse and extending that permissibility to AI? Should we not expect our systems to be better than the best of us? The next generation of GPT/AI innovation will likely release this trapped value, but IMHO we need to hold a high bar on accuracy and veracity.
Jobs, Employment, Career Development
Geoff’s points about trapped value in the context of jobs, employment, career development merit pondering.
Every wave of computing that has released trapped value, and made us more productive and efficient, has caused a shift in our behavior. We rarely go to the bank anymore except when we need cash or deposit a check (yes I know, more on that below). We walk by the airline ticketing agent straight to the gate with our mobile boarding passes, except when we need to checkin our bags.
One would expect that the number of bank tellers and ticketing agents to have shrunk because of this innovation. Out of curiosity, I looked at what has been the impact on these jobs. Here is what I found.
- The Tellers workforce has seen an average annual growth of 21.5% between 2014 and 2020. (Source: DataUSA). According to Bank of America, 37% of all deposits are mobile, which means there are a lot of people under the bell curve that are going into banks to deposit checks. According to AmericanBanker, there is currently a labor shortage in the retail banking sector.
- The first mobile boarding pass was piloted in 2007 by Continental Airlines. The unemployment rate of ticketing agents went from just shy of 9% in 2010 to less than 3% in 2018. (Source: Zippia)
So, that’s interesting. The jobs that we would have expected to be impacted by e-commerce and the mobile wave didn’t actually get impacted. Possibly AI might not be as forgiving, but then again the movie is not over yet.
Have a safe Labor Day Weekend!
On Product Leadership 