Sat Nov 25, 2023 12:00 AM Last update on: Sat Nov 25, 2023 01:12 AM
Two upper-level management personnel celebrating their latest profit-making initiative. Photo: Krakenimages
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Two upper-level management personnel celebrating their latest profit-making initiative. Photo: Krakenimages
A study has come out from the University of Where the Sun Don’t Shine, proclaiming that Artificial Intelligence will never be able to replace Genuine Idiocy™.
Dr Cam Delman, a leading researcher in this field, has been grappling with this problem for a long time now. “Industry leaders have been asking this question for years, and I have received tremendous support from CEOs and MDs of leading organisations who were scared that their jobs may be on the chopping block with the rise of AI and automation.”
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But his research has put leaders across industries at ease, as the decision making and planning abilities of individuals at the helm of large organisations has proven impossible to replicate using AI.
“We have fed the best, cutting edge AI models in the world an enormous training dataset of decisions made by CXOs from some of the most profitable companies in the world. But when we gave these models some real world scenarios and asked them to make decisions that would be beneficial to the companies, the models started giving meaningless results,” he added.
According to a presentation Dr Delman made on his research, the decisions the AI was making were humane, and often prioritised the wellbeing of company employees over the bottom line.
For example, when it was asked what a garment manufacturer should do if living costs were going up for factory workers while there was pressure from buyers to keep manufacturing costs low, the AI kept suggesting that the company should sustain a lower profit margin in the short term, and invest in R&D to boost productivity in the long term.
“But we know from studying and interviewing leaders in the industry that the only logical decision a leader can make in this situation is to force workers to work with lower wages,” said Dr Delman, explaining how AI is not fit to lead large organisations.
In another example, the AI model was asked if a company with a promising product should invest all of its remaining capital in marketing, or if it should go for a balanced approach and invest in developing the product and market the end result.
The AI, apparently, exhibiting its complete ineffectiveness in making CXO-level decisions, recommended that the product should be prioritised, and that marketing should be data driven, and investments should only be made in marketing approaches that have a chance of working.
Travis Bickle, Head of Marketing at Taxify Inc., laughed when this correspondent asked him why the AI was wrong to suggest this, “All marketing is good marketing, and good marketing leads to profits, so the only right approach to running a business is to focus on marketing. In fact, if the product is difficult to market, a company should change the product. Look at us for example, at Taxify, we were supposed to be a company who helps people file their taxes. As that was difficult for me to market, I started a supplementary business where we also provide taxi services to people, which is a bit like Uber but you have to call the cars using your voice and hand signals. Now, our original business is dead and buried, but the taxi business is barely alive, which is a great success!”
Asked if he was scared of AI taking his job, Bickle said, “No chance. What I have is much more impressive than AI, it’s GI!”
“Genuine Idiocy?” this correspondent asked.
“What?! No, I meant Grand Intelligence.”
“Right, of course.”