Renting your reasoning
Ethics aside (to the extent one can do that), should you use generative AI in your work?
At their core, generative AI models are text synthesis engines. They don’t think or reason, despite what the marketing says. They simply fabricate plausible-sounding text.
If you imagine prefixing your queries with “What would a plausible answer to this question sound like?:“ you'll get a clearer picture of their underlying mechanism. The factual accuracy of any response is basically a side effect of how prominently those facts appear in the training data.
So, the only truly safe uses are text manipulation tasks like style changes (“make this announcement more formal”…), standardising date formats, semantic search and replace (“replace sections where I sound hesitant with something assertive”), things like that.
There are plenty of unsafe or less-safe uses. Those are going to depend on your risk tolerance. Some potential risks to consider include:
- Generative AI is non-deterministic, i.e., unpredictable. Even if you give it the same starting conditions, you might get a different result each time. Any process depending on predictable outcomes is at risk. Insurers are looking to add specific exclusions to business policies so they are not obligated to cover AI-related workflows - enough said.
- Generative AI doesn’t summarise, it shortens. Not a huge issue for an email, pretty bad for a scientific paper.
- In most cases, content produced with AI can’t be copyrighted (US law, soon to be EU law also).
- It’s a financial house of cards. Every $20 subscription costs them $200; every $200 one costs them $5000. And the rest of the finances are even worse. Consider the risk of basing any workflow on services that could collapse at any time. There are 3 or 4 major generative AI providers; most of the other AI services or “AI included” services are essentially wrappers built on top of them. And nearly all of them are losing money.
- It makes you dumber. Which isn’t a huge surprise. Technology built to help you think less will make you … think less.
So, what’s the takeaway? Vet the tools thoroughly based on your risk profile, and make sure nothing will break (including your brain) if they suddenly disappear.
Colin