Don’t confuse that title with me not being a proponent of AI. I am. Some of the stuff it is doing is amazing, and if you aren’t leveraging it – you are falling behind. But hear me out.
AI is best used as a “tool to drive a solution.” Not as “the solution.”
We are not at a point where we can ask AI to handle complex solutions without checking its work. And if you ask it to, you are opening yourself and your organization to a large risk.
Example: LinkedIn AI Resume Tailoring Feature
Need an example to prove AI is not ready to be trusted in an un-supervised capacity? Check out the video below of me attempting to use LinkedIn’s AI capability designed to tailor my resume for an open position.
As you can see, that poor poor agent got confused.
But, its okay. What it also did was simplify the writing and helped me narrow down my accomplishments based on the post. Overall, it added value. But, if I would have blindly sent that resume off, it would have led to some awkward conversations during the interview process and ultimately they would be unlikely to move forward with me as a candidate.
Don’t Get Rid of Your Experts – Yet
What’s scary about the above is that the answer looks right. The AI condensed my experience into something that was properly formatted. It read well. And it might have even gotten the attention of a hiring manager.
But, it wasn’t right. And I knew that because, well, I’m me. I know me and what I have done. But if you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t know that it was incorrect.
That’s where this idea of using AI as a solution is so dangerous.
Again, this is a small example. The worst thing that would come out of this is I wouldn’t get a job offer. It would negatively effect my family of 4. But that would be the extent of the blast radius.
But if this were a company, the legal ramifications could be massive. If this were a trusted organization, the reputational impact could be catastrophic. And if this were a government agency, it could negatively impact hundreds of thousands or millions of citizens.
Yes, it is a tool. Yes, it is a powerful tool. And yes, you absolutely need to be incorporating it into your workflow.
But it is not a solution. At least, not yet.
PostScript to my Post
Sometimes it can be frustrating the limitations of the tool. For example, I wanted to use AI to generate a feature image for this post. And here’s the output from my prompts.
So it can generate this beautiful image, but not resize? Interesting…