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Common misconceptions about workplace AI

Brian Madden
Brian Madden,Workplace AI Consultant & Analyst
This page was last updated on July 21, 2024.
This page is part of The Workplace AI Strategy Guide

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Brian (July 2024)

There are a lot of misconceptions, in both directions? (e.g. things people think are false which are actually true, and things that people believe to be true which are not.)

Honestly most of these misconceptions are pretty black-and-white, and the reality is there’s a lot more nuance to each of them. (Can you tell I’m a consultant?)

Misconception: I can ignore this for now because AI is not ready

The biggest misconception about AI which I hear is people think they don’t need to worry about it yet, because AI is “not ready” or it’s “still a future thing” which isn’t impacting the business world today.

As we’ve already covered, this is simply not true. Yes, AI is often over-hyped, and there are countless stories about companies who’ve tried to implement large, complex systems which failed. But that’s not what this guide is about. Our focus is workplace AI, which are the AI tools such as ChatGPT that you’re employees have access to and are using today. They’re using these tools whether they’re appropriate or not, and it’s important for you to get out in front of this and understand the current and potential future impact as soon as possible.

Even if you think AI is total bunk and all hype, your employees are still using it.

Misconception: I can ignore this because generative AI isn’t very good

Your employees don’t know (or care?) that it’s not very good. They’re still using it anyway. (See above.)

Also, “AI is not very good” is subjective. Not good at what? Can it write an award-winning novel? No. (But then again, can your employees? Also no.) But your employees aren’t using Gen AI to write novels, they’re using it to write emails. And Gen AI is definitely good enough to do that.

Misconception: I can ignore this because AI is a hype bubble which is about to pop

Even if it pops, and all future AI advancement stops, tools like ChatGPT already exist, and your employees are already using them today. You need to understand what’s happening in your workplace today, regardless of what the future holds.

Misconception: We’ve taken Gen AI as fas as it can go. It will never be super human.

So what? See above.

Misconception: AI replaces jobs

Maybe? Technology always automates things that was previously done by humans. Does that lead to job loss? Sure, that’s one option. The company could also use the same number of employees to get more work done. (So maybe the story is about growth and not job loss?) Or the company might be able to get to market faster, or take on more interesting projects. There are lots of outcomes to this, it doesn’t automatically have to be job loss.

BTW one of my pet peeves here is the statement, “AI won’t replace jobs, but an employee who does not use AI will be replaced by one that does.” Meh. I guess. But that quote is trite and really simplifies things. AI is being integrated into all aspects of work, it’s just another technology. That’s kind of like saying in 1985 that, “An employee who doesn’t use a computer will be replaced by one who does.” Maybe?

Misconception: AI will be better than humans

Fine, so what? The fact that AI is “only mediocre” shouldn’t be a problem for the corporate world. I’ve been working for 30 years and I gotta say, most work product generated by most people at most companies is pretty mediocre.

It’s like with self-driving cars, when people try to list all these crazy reasons where the self-driving car would fail (the simultaneous night, rain/sleet/ice, off-camber turn, a deer runs on the road right when a tire blows out), and I’m just thinking, “I don’t think most human drivers would not crash either!” The thing with self driving cars is they don’t need to be better than the best driver on the road to have value—they only need to be better than the WORST driver on the road to have value.

Same goes for workplace AI. Does your company have some superstar employees who are top of their game and amazing? (Hopefully yes!) These are not the people you should look to replace with AI. :) Instead the AI just needs to be good enough to create work product equal to your worst-performing employees who are just phoning it in. (In a similar vein, those are the people who should be worried about their jobs. The superstars will be fine.)

Misconception: AI requires humans to be in the loop

Since Workplace AI is pretty early, people say that because we can’t fully trust it (Hallucinations, generic content, etc.), that humans will need to be in the loop to check the AI.

Maybe.

Again, maybe. Even if the AI is only mediocre, lots of humans are also only mediocre. If you let AI do the 80% of the easy things, and you want humans to do the 20% of the hard things, will the humans like that? Personally I’m able to do the hard stuff by definition because it’s only 20% of my time. I need the mental break of 80% less intensive things. Can you imagine having a job that was all the hard stuff 100% of the time. (This is what I imagine air traffic controllers do.) Most workers would not like that. (Or they would want a 500% raise.)

Misconception: AI is always accurate

There’s a lot of talk about the quality of data, garbage in, garbage out. All true. But fundamentally you need to understand how these systems work.

Misconception: AI removes human bias

It’s better to say that it “relocated” the bias to the model from the person using it. But the bias is still there, and can be hard to detect.