Probably not, yet.
While Dataspace can’t do anything to help with your anxiety about election data, we can provide some relief from another trending anxiety-inducer: the fear that AI is coming for your job.
Don’t worry. In a lot of areas AI is just not ready to make human workers redundant.
Exhibit A: Live Sports
I think the headline below encapsulates the narrative perfectly:
SOCCER MATCH RUINED WHEN AI-CONTROLLED CAMERA MISTAKES REF’S BALD HEAD FOR BALL!
Ruined.
The match was ruined! At least for the spectators. Knowing how seriously soccer/football/futbol fans take their sport, there is little chance that they will be tolerant of glitchy technology in this context.
This little SNAFU shows that there is still some work to be done before AI controlled cameras can offer the same quality of experience that a professional human camera operator provides for a fast-moving sports game.
However, the incident proved to be a bit more thought provoking than I anticipated as I began to share the link around with friends. Most enjoyed a laugh and appreciated the humor of the situation, but one IT professional simply responded with:
\”Just have him wear a hat. *shrug emoji*\”
Problem solved?
While a future blog post might need to be dedicated to the issue of engineers ruining jokes with their “practical solutions”… I actually found this comment to be quite telling about a potential division in our society\’s attitudes and approaches to AI tools moving forward, as demonstrated by the differing responses that my friend and I had to the same AI related incident:
Me (non-technical pseudo-professional): “Ha! That is funny! The algorithm is stupid! They\’ll need to work on that!”
IT Engineering Professional: “The algorithm isn’t broken. Just remove the interference.”
While the above summary is an oversimplification, and I certainly don’t mean to imply that there will be a strict division along technical/non-technical lines when it comes to future approaches to AI implementation, the disparity in these responses brings up some interesting questions:
In certain cases AI might not quite fit/be ready to automate the way we currently do things… but what will our approach be looking to the future? What will the balance be moving forward between finessing AI to integrate with/automate our current operative systems vs. adapting our own norms and processes to develop more innovative cooperation between humans and AI?
We’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions, and insights on the plans for AI integration in your field!
In the meantime, we’ll continue to be on the lookout for other areas where AI is not ready to take your job!