How to Survive the Upcoming AI Tsunami

Like it or not we are all going to get inundated by AI, Robotics and Automation opportunities. As organizations or individuals, we will have to decide how we are going to respond. Since we can no longer count on AI going back into another “AI Winter” because it is not going away. We will have to decide on AI as a trend and each AI encounter we will be facing. Our choices on AI will either make us win or lose in the short term and the long run. What are the responses to AI we can exercise?

Ignore AI

You can take the approach that ignores AI as long as possible. While this might work for a while, eventually you will come face to face with AI in one of your roles in life. The one redeeming benefit to this approach is that by the time you have to deal, AI will be easier, in general, as the human/AI interface will be mature by the time you will face it. The problem is that you may have to catch up with the pack as they have been experienced in leveraging AI. In fact, as an employee, this approach actually has some dangers implied.

Resist AI

Resisting change is a natural human instinct but it can be dialed up or toned down. This is a delicate stance. Subconsciously, there is a natural resistance to software that can digest large amounts of data and information and maybe be smarter than us. It can tug at our egos and this is kind of natural and probably will disappear over time. There also could be a conscious resistance that some folks will employ to avoid or just plain fight AI at all fronts. The motivation might be the learning curve for new skills. We might not be fast enough to not be replaced by AI, so resistance is a tactic.

Verify AI

We all have seen the effects of not verifying and adequately learning how software can affect outcomes. Just look at the recent headlines with the 737 Max 8 planes where the response from authorities is "you should have read the manual."  Not that I would suggest we should read the manual before we step on an airplane, but we need to verify the effect AI and software, in general, l can have on our lives. Had I known there were no specific in-depth training nor specialized simulators for this plane, we could have avoided them. In the same light, we need to verify who has certified and tested the AI we interact with even if it is not life-threatening. What if AI created a custom medicine that incorporated all your meds or you were injected with nanotechnology to monitor aspects of your health, would you verify?

Comply with AI

One can assume that the AI has been tested and is not likely to do anything but help us in various life roles we participate in regularly. This compliance approach exercises faith that the people who applied the AI correctly. I would suspect we will be using AI and not knowing about it anyway. It is clear when you interact with a bot in either a servicing or sales/marketing situations, but AI will be embedded in places that we would hardly detect it. We may or may not have the opportunity to comply as AI will just be there and not be obvious.  I would suggest the best AI implementations will behave that way.

Participate with AI

We could also choose to embrace AI actively. One approach would be to get to know the AI implementation early so we could understand the subtleties of interacting an AI component. We could use the implied strengths and weaknesses to our advantage. Another approach would get fully on board to know much about AI and their implementations to take advantage of it for revenue purposes. If AI is as successful as an automation option that all the pundits are projecting, why not get ahead of the curve. This assumes that you like to learn and be at the edge.

Net; Net

I would suggest that most of us will exercise nearly all of these options at some point in the future. You may decide to resist until you see the results. You may decide to ignore AI until it comes to your door and then you execute a downstream decision about AI. The fully embrace approach will be taken by those that like a challenge and don't shrink back from change. Even if you are that kind of individual, it may not be for all the roles that you participate in at the moment.