Reading Prof. Mollick on AI
Wharton Business School's Prof. Ethan Mollick offers regular excellent insights into AI
Let's delve into some business insights. First, a shoutout to Soo Chye Lee (Wee Swee Teow in Singapore) for the attached article from The Business Times. The article advises Singaporean boards, stating, “Understanding AI should be part of a director's ongoing educational journey and a collective effort undertaken by the entire board....”) I note that only the US and China outrank Singapore on AI progress.
Pivoting to the United States, Wharton Business School's Prof. Ethan Mollick offers regular excellent insights into AI. On October 3, he summarized the state of play in advance of Google’s expected overtaking of OpenAI with their next model, Gemini. I found Mollick’s framing extremely helpful for understanding the "first phase of the AI era".
The following excerpts from Prof. Mollick's article caught my eye:
Where we are Today: "It isn’t science fiction to assume that AIs will soon talk to you, see you, know about you, do research for you, create images for you - because all of that is already built, and working. I can already pull all of these elements together myself with just a little effort.”
AI's Expanding Vision: "Once you give AIs vision, they gain a new method of interacting with the world, one that expands their capabilities into industries and uses that most of us had never considered…. deciphering handwritten treatises on mummies written in archaic Catalan … becoming a solid photography coach… read an operating manual to learn how to use a machine, write an insurance report, perform medical diagnoses, do manufacturing analyses… Out of the box, it is extraordinarily good at facial recognition, even without training, and it can accurately assess the expressions on people’s faces, the location in which they are, and the context in which they are acting.”
The Power of AI Voice: "If you are used to yelling at Siri or Alexa, these new AI powered systems are going to be a big change: they can understand accents, mixes of languages, and are not bothered by crowded, noisy rooms… Combined with the 'brains' of the LLM, you can start to do interesting things: …"
“Talking with an AI is an oddly personal experience: even though you know you are talking to a machine; it feels like there is a real human interested in what you have to say. This is all an illusion, but it is a convincing enough one that, even with today’s LLMs, I can see people looking forward to talking to their AI companions.”
AI Connected to More Data: "As AIs learn more about you, their usefulness will go up, though the full implications of AIs that make complex inferences about you is currently unclear."
The Shape of Things to Come: "So, we can’t see the Thing that is being built, or even the shadow it is going to cast over work and education, but we can get a sense of its general shape … AI can quite easily serve as personal assistant, intern, and companion — answering emails, giving advice, paying attention to the world around you — in a way that makes the Siris and Alexas of the world look prehistoric … [suggesting] unexpected corporate and government uses ... to empower and simplify … or to remove power.