Let’s Get Real About the Impact of AI on Jobs

History tells us that industrial revolutions ultimately do create more jobs, but that the transition period is long and highly turbulent. Thus, when we see resistance in the workplace to AI and automation in general, we should acknowledge that the resistance and fear are well-grounded.

The Dethroning of Deduction

AI's favoring of induction over deduction is the root of its power, for it lets it deal with the specifics that bedevil the application of broad major premises.

252 Million Walas

There are 195 countries in the world. How many more entrepreneurial innovation hotspots are out there, waiting to be tapped and awakened? In our high-tech, virtual world, all of the steps Pakistan has taken can be replicated virtually anywhere, regardless of your country's size, GDP, or location. Imagine the possibilities ...

The Long- and Short-Term Impacts of AI Technologies

A much less-known but arguably more critical tech law is Amara's Law, which states that we tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technology while underestimating its long-term effects.

The rise and potential fall of the citizen developer

The citizen developer movement was heralded as a revolution. Like most revolutions, things have sometimes gone differently than planned. The logic is sound, empowering those who know the business best to build the tools and systems needed to do their job. Ah, if only things were that simple …

On Chat AI and BS

So, I'm sticking with hallucinations for all of chat AI's statements, true or false. But that leaves us with a question: Why isn't there a word that perfectly expresses this situation? The answer is easy: LLMs are doing something genuinely new in our history. Our lack of a perfectly apt verb proves it.

Inefficient at the speed of light

While process mining started years ago as a mainly data-driven exercise, its stated goal is to be knowledge-driven. Given KM's multidisciplinary scope, we can play a major role in achieving that goal. Any process, no matter how simple, has the potential to reach across an entire business ecosystem, including all stakeholders. This seems like a perfect match for collaborative workflow, AI/ML, knowledge graphs, human sensemaking, and many of the other arrows in our KM quiver.

The end of tech glory days

The tech industry's glory days may be fading a little, but this is not a time for despair. It's an opportunity for renewal. By shifting to a needs-driven approach, the industry can ensure its relevance in a rapidly changing landscape.

The third place of knowledge management

The third place I alluded to goes far beyond mechanistic KM or curated knowledge and takes us into the actual world of tacit knowledge. Here, knowledge comes from and often remains as personal experience, impressions, and intuition; it's undocumented and often hidden and elusive.

Should we go back to paper-based KM?

The sheer volume of largely useless data we have accumulated across the years severely limits the ability of AI to work well, and it comes at a heavy environmental and financial cost.

The flip side of generative AI: Extractive AI

Extractive AI takes a more comprehensive and transparent approach to machine intelligence.

The trust problem with GenAI

2023 has been the year of ultra-hyping GenAI, and who is paying for this deluge of marketing? Technology vendors that want us to buy it. Again, it's impressive stuff, but when we shift from selling to buying and ultimately using it, many tough questions need to be asked.

When is good enough enough?

Our goal should be to improve the quality of knowledge assets and their accuracy and relevance in use. Much of this will come from human expertise and effort, increasingly combined with the power of AI.

AI technologies upending traditional KM

If we are not careful and proactive about it, the concept and importance of knowledge itself may soon become blurred or lost.

Return on … Infrastructure???

As our physical and IT infrastructure continues to grow in size, complexity, and vulnerability, people and the knowledge they possess will play an ever-increasing role.

The undiscovered country

Capturing and sharing what you already know is good; and with today's data and text analytics tools, it has become much easier than when we'd first begun this journey.

The critical part of critical infrastructure

Whether we're talking about infrastructure to support the flow of goods or the flow of knowledge, all require energy, and lots of it.

What happens when AI meets a pandemic?

This is what we can see clearly after some months of reading, watching, and listening to the pronouncements on the novel coronavirus crisis from around the globe: Content challenges continue to dog AI.

The convergence of convergence

The more systems and subsystems we attempt to stitch together, the greater the unpredictability.

Usability testing for effective interactivity

Connecting the seeker to the information she seeks is not a new problem. Interaction design has been a stumbling block since the age of the card catalog.