One of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s most oft-repeated lines is that the company needs to transform from being a know-it-all to a learn-it-all. The phrase stuck with me from the first moment I heard it.
No one likes a know-it-all. But being one could have gotten you pretty far in the before times.
The internet started to crack that notion by putting the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. Generative A.I. breaks the idea wide open.
Simply knowing information, being able to pull it from your brain, might make for a good party trick sometimes, but it’s completely unnecessary today.
The ability — and most important!!! — willingness to learn won’t do much for you at a party, but it’s the only way forward.
I recently read a post from someone in a group online and was stopped in my tracks at the sentiment of the poster. It wasn’t surprising, but it made me slow my scroll and think.
“…mostly I want to avoid feeding it,” she said of A.I. “I don’t want to be responsible for its growth and maturity.”
OK, the first part is controllable. Don’t go on the internet ever again. And with the way the new “world models” are being created, don’t go in public ever again.
The second part? She doesn’t want to be responsible for its growth and maturity. Well… she’s not responsible for that. So, I guess she can check that off the list.
But she continues.
“And I want to know how to bring up the issues surrounding it in conversations with people I know. If someone mentions they used it, what should my response be? How can I not just feel like it’s everywhere and being used by everyone and feel a total lack of control of where it’s headed?”
I feel for her. She’s really worried. But she’s also using an extremely self-centered lens to view the world. I gently suggested she try looking at those last few sentences and replace the idea of A.I. with the idea of the internet.
Imagine if 30 years ago, she worried, “And I want to know how to bring up the issues surrounding the internet in conversations with people I know. If someone mentions they used the internet, what should my response be? How can I not just feel like it’s everywhere and being used by everyone and feel a total lack of control of where it’s headed?”
The only way through this is a willingness to learn. And I think that’s what she thought she was trying to do here. But asking a group of strangers on the internet how she can avoid feeling like it’s everywhere and being used by everyone isn’t the most effective way to start to learning.
The most liked answer to her question: Add -ai to your Google search, and it won’t use A.I. to find the answer. 🤦🏻♀️
First of all, yes, it will. A.I. is literally how Google works.
But much more importantly, it’s missing the entire point. It’s ignoring the tsunami of change coming to the internet... and to the world.
Thirty years ago, you could imagine someone giving an equivalent answer: “You can avoid feeling like everyone is using Google by going more granular on your memorization of the Dewey Decimal System!”
What can we do?
I don’t mean for this to sound like we’re helpless when it comes to A.I. and what’s coming. We just need to focus. Each of us can specify exactly what we care about, what can be done in that area, and what is out of our hands.
One of the frontier A.I. CEO’s put it this way last week: “You can't just step in front of the train and stop it. The only move that's going to work is steering the train — steer it 10 degrees in a different direction from where it was going. That can be done. That's possible, but we have to do it now.”
Closing our eyes to A.I. is not going to make it go away. Coming up with a pithy response to people who say they’re using it isn’t going to change anything. There is no solution to “feeling like it’s everywhere and being used by everyone” because it is. And they are. And you are.
This may very well be my last post until September. I hope to keep it up, but today is the last day my preschooler will have school. Then all five kids will be home all summer. We’ll just have to see how often I can take a minute to write. So, if this is it for the next few months, here is your assignment: Listen and learn and try 👏 it 👏your 👏 self.
Find the lines you’re not willing cross. Find the parts of A.I. that make you gasp and put your foot down. Then seek out the details of what you can do about it.
But also, find the parts of A.I. that make you gasp in wonder. And let your mind wander through the possibilities you would have never even dreamed of.
Scanning kids’ eyes to make sure they’re not cheating in school? That’s a line for me.
A world where we stop asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and start asking, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” That’s a wonder.
Find yours. Find ways to steer the train. Find ways to create new tracks.
Then, report back. I really, really want to know what you come up with.
I love this Sheelah!