Always invite AI to the table 🤖
Big ideas from the book Co-intelligence by Ethan Mollick
We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
-Amara’s Law
Generative AI has gained tremendous popularity as well as a lot of doomsday predictions (AI can do everything/we all will lose jobs etc) - i.e. we are certainly overreacting in the short term and not visualizing the long term.
Cutting through the noise of AI evangelists and AI doom-mongers, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world.
In his book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI (you get an exclusive summary before anyone else!), Ethan urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach.
Before I share the big ideas from the book, here is a quick advice: If you are somebody who talks Langchain/RAG even in your sleep, feel free to skip the book as the book is more targeted towards ‘mass audience’ - the ones who aren’t in the field are constantly being told that AI will take away their jobs.
Sharing big ideas from his book, i.e. on rules for co-intelligence, i.e .how do we ‘work with’ AI.
Principle 1: Always invite AI to the table.
You should try inviting AI to help you in everything you do, barring legal or ethical barriers. As you experiment, you may find that AI help can be satisfying, or frustrating, or useless, or unnerving.
Incorporate AI into your workflow, staying within legal and ethical bounds. Experiment to discover where it shines, falls short, or even raises concerns. By understanding AI's capabilities, you'll be better equipped to navigate a future where it plays an increasing role. Remember, AI is a tool to be leveraged, not a substitute for human judgment.
Given that AI is a General Purpose Technology, there is no single manual or instruction book that you can refer to in order to understand its value and its limits.
The key is to keep humans firmly in the loop—to use AI as an assistive tool, not as a crutch.
Principle 2: Be the human in the loop.
For now, AI works best with human help, and you want to be that helpful human. As AI gets more capable and requires less human help—you still want to be that human. So the second principle is to learn to be the human in the loop.
Currently, AI functions best when we actively help it along. Make yourself indispensable in this process. As AI capabilities increase, don't become passive - double down on your role as the 'human in the loop'.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to BigIdeas: startups, tech and big ideas! to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.