Am I The AI Luddite?
Am I The AI Luddite?
In which a week of conference conversations makes me ponder my conflicted thoughts on AI adoption.
I had a really good week at the Lavacon conference this past week. As usual it delivered some exceptional sessions, alongside the fun and engaging conversations.
Some of the sessions have been informative, some educational, and many thought-provoking. And it is probably no surprise that discussions and mention of AI was an almost constant presence, having grown from a topic of interest last year to having its own dedicated track this year.
Yet in all honesty I remain somewhat conflicted in my feelings about both the technology, and the speed of its seemingly global adoption.
In fact part way through the first day I texted the following to my wife, Gill:
God I’m feeling like the Luddite old codger. It seems that everyone is drinking from the AI hype hose. Maybe I’m too much a writer than a techy these days.
Now don’t get me wrong, I'm not anti-AI in general terms. I’ve been honored to work on projects and products that use AI for things where I believe that AI can really help - by taking on repetitive tasks to do things at a speed, at scale, and level of accuracy that humans can’t match. AI is brilliant at pattern matching, building connections between data types, data mining and even providing predictive analytics.
What I do have issues with is the apparent blind adoption of Generative AI. Maybe it’s because I am a writer at heart, that I don’t understand the apparent rush to divest ourselves of the skill that made us human in the first place - the ability to share our personal knowledge and ideas.
As my colleague Joe Gollner pointed out on one of the slides in his Lavacon presentation, “The Unlikely (but necessary) marriage of Content & Engineering,” there is danger in a situation ‘When AI Runs Amok’ which he defined as:
AI consuming information indiscriminately, without management guidance on objectives and guardrails, and without scalable oversight.
Organizations savor the chance to offload responsibility while harvesting superficial benefits.
Sound familiar?
As Joe pointed out:
This form of AI is as popular as it is dangerous.
Yet despite this, pretty much every other presentation I attend included phrases like “just feed content to the AI, or “make your content AI ready,” or “use AI to generate content…” with none of them addressing what to me are the underlying issues of:
Legal and Moral - Where is the content that is feeding the Large Language Model (LLM) powering your AI coming from? Does your company own it, or have rights to use it?
If you are using a public OpenAI tool, like ChatGPT, the chances are that the content driving your output is based on stolen copyrighted content just scraped from an on-line source without the original owner’s permission (I have found a couple of my own short stories where this has happened - so I may have a personal bias).
Then there is the fact that most platforms these days switch on AI scraping tools as default and you have to jump through multiple hoops to disable the feature in order to opt out - Looking at you LinkedIn, Wordpress, Meta and others. - If you are OK with your content being used to train someone else’s AI then it should be an Opt-In process.
Environmental - There seems to be a perception that AI is some sort of magic that just happens, The infrastructure behind it is complex, and growing at an exponential rate.
The power needs and environmental impact of the huge data centers needed to power AI is currently catastrophic. I’ve heard it said that the power distribution systems are about 5 years behind the AI data centers current needs. We could be facing power-outages caused just by AI demand. There was an article recently that reported that Microsoft was looking at an operating lease to recommission the infamous Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant just to power its AI data centers.
Then there is the water consumption needed to cool these massive data centers. The average data center uses 300,000 gallons of water per day, which is about the same as 100,000 homes. Each time an AI tool is prompted, it uses about 16 ounces of water - about the amount of a regular bottle of drinking water - each time you make a prompt it’s like pouring a bottle of water on the floor.
Business needs - Putting aside the dubious business practices of many of the new AI based tech companies for the moment. If your company is using AI we should be asking what business problem they are trying to solve? I have yet to have anyone give me an answer for using Generative AI that made me go “oh yeah now I get it.” - In many cases what I get is something on the lines that a senior executive has told various functional groups that they need to find a place where AI can be used in the business. This is putting the cart before the horse. In my opinion Generative AI is currently an immature technology in search of a solution.
Of course there’s also the whole quality of the output issue - which is a topic for another long future newsletter discussion.
If you are going to implement Generative AI, then you need to be asking yourself questions:
What is the problem you will solve by using it?
Do you know where the content is coming from?
Do you have the rights to it?
Are you OK with the environmental impact of your AI usage?
Are you just doing it so the CEO can say you are an AI company on the next earnings call?
In his presentation on Joe went on outline how to sensibly align Content Strategy, Content Operations, and Content Engineering to form a stable ecosystem where Content and AI can work together. Now that I could get behind. (provided we can address the business, governance, and environmental issues - all big asks) - But unfortunately we’ve got a long way to go to get there.
Alan
A Note of Appreciation
Welcome abroad to all our new subscribers following my webinar on Customer Focused Storytelling that was hosted by The Content Wrangler / Heretto and the discussion on Delivering Persona-based Content on the Content Matters podcast from the folks at Ingeniux.
Thanks to all the folks who took up new subscriptions recently or read the newsletter since its launch. We really appreciate the support.
We hope that you will enjoy what we have to offer, and remember the easiest way to receive the newsletter each week is to hit the SUBSCRIBE button so it gets delivered straight to your email inbox.
Weekly Thought
By focusing on an individual as a persona you can narrow your focus too much and miss a large percentage of the customers and prospects who might benefit from your message. Personas should be focused on addressing customer needs, not on developing fictional characters.
Customer Focused Storytelling Workshops
THE CONTENT POOL is pleased to announce that we are now offering our popular Customer Focused Storytelling Workshops
We are now taking bookings for Q1/2025, and we wanted to make sure that as a newsletter reader you got an early opportunity to lock-in a date.
“Weaving storytelling into the mix makes the content more compelling, accessible, and effective!”
Learn how to deliver content-driven experiences that your customers relate to on our two-day Customer Outcome Focused Storytelling workshop.
In this workshop, we will:
Examine content from the customer’s perspective.
Plan how to adapt content delivery to meet the needs of a rapidly changing marketplace
Examine why every business transaction is a story
Outline the 10 Rules of Storytelling as applied to Customer Experience
Apply proven storytelling techniques to your content.
Identify potential opportunities for incorporating storytelling techniques
into the production of your customer-facing content assets.Facilitate an interactive feedback session on your existing customer-facing content.
If you would like more details, or you like to discuss reserving a date for yourself and your team to benefit from a Customer Focused Storytelling Workshop, just email us at ajp@4jsgroup.com to reserve your date.
In The Bookstore
If you enjoy the contents of this newsletter and would like more, we have three books always available from XML Press.
You can also check out The Content Pool website or follow us on FaceBook you can also find Alan on most of the social media platforms @alanjporter.
Please feel free to share the newsletter and pass it around to any friends or colleagues you think might find it of value.
Till next time - have fun paddling in The Content Pool.
Alan J. Porter
The Content Pool™ is a division of the 4Js Group LLC
Thanks for sharing some AI takeaways from Lavacon. Quick question -- is the post title correct? Should it be "Am I the AI Luddite?"?