Week 5 - MBA 6101 - Surfing the Tsunami

Last week, you learned the importance of learning and paying attention to how things are changing and in what direction in the field of AI. This first step is called "adapt." Once you have adapted to the AI environment by consistently researching various sources, you need to "adopt" your knowledge in AI and make it yours in your daily life - this is the second step. Using the traditional techniques of doing things is unsustainable for most people. People who have adopted AI in their lives are much more productive than people who have not because the shift to AI is inevitable. 

Image an assembly line of a company where routine work is done every day. That was the norm in the past, even if many companies still rely on routine work. However, things are done much faster because of automation. Automation made things easier and faster for everybody. Now think of automation of automation: a computer system that can read how many resources are left and order more if needed, or interpret the market and increment or reduce production accordingly. AI can give us results like these.

Think of all the benefits you receive from using the various features of Microsoft Office. If you are familiar with macros in Word or Excel, you may know how you can automate tasks and obtain complex results with one single click. All you needed was to tell the program to record what you wanted to do. However, AI is more than automation. AI can go even further as we, users, become creative, learn more, adapt to the changes in the environment, adopt these changes, and become adepts of AI.

References

Kelsey, T. (2018). Surfing the Tsunami: An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Options for Responding [Kindle version]. RGB Press. Kindle Edition.