Grace, Garbage, and GPT

Southerners can be prone to alliteration. At least I am.

Brigid McDermott

is hosting a video podcast series about Digital Transformation and invited me as a guest yesterday to speak about Artificial Intelligence. The series has such an appropriate name — DX: Bridging the Divide — because that “divide” is a very real thing. If you’re interested in our 34-minute banter, the link is below.

link to —— DX: Bridging the Divide ep. IV
June 28, 2023 - hosted by

Brigid McDermott

I had a lot of fun (thanks, Brigid!) and several people reached out afterward. There are two things I said that consistently caught people’s attention, so I thought I’d expand on them here.

GARBAGE.

I don’t mince words when I’m wound up, and I called it “garbage” that people won’t use generative AI because it’s inaccurate. A study was released recently that polled 300 senior business leaders — half of those leaders aren’t using AI technologies (as of March 30, 2023):

• 45% weren’t using AI because they didn’t think it was accurate enough yet

• 72% weren’t using AI because it’s not in their scope and is owned by the IT department

Garbage.

Yes, generative AI hallucinates (including tools like ChatGPT). It connects words in an incorrect way — it’s wrong (not malicious, not unethical, just wrong). The fact is, I’m wrong a lot more than GPT is. I thought I knew - or heard, or read - something. Or I wanted something to be different or better than it was, so I “improved” on it… Humans “hallucinate” or make things up intentionally a lot more than ChatGPT (this in an unscientific non-fact, as believed by Tonya Long). No one has stopped using human input — we can’t afford to, it would be silly.

So it’s silly (i.e., “garbage”) to say you “Don’t use AI / ChatGPT because it’s not accurate enough yet.”

Use it and learn to verify your sources. Without going too far on this - whether it’s politics or peer executives… you develop a sense about who’s accurate (or nearly accurate) and who’s not. And you use that intuition every day when you make decisions about how to utilize the information they provide. The only thing different with ChatGPT and related tools is that it’s WRITTEN, so you feel more accountable by passing it along. I think there’s something inherently good about that accountability.

Solutions:

• Verify where there are facts presented that you’re not familar with.

• Check links and references.

• If you’re a business leader, set up workflows and governance to accommodate this. It’s your business and your process — take ownership of the rules, don’t wait for mistakes to cause dissension and friction, either across your team or toward the tool sets.

GRACE. [28:30]

As Brigid and I worked through yesterday’s dialogue, where we landed was a big “Ah-ha” on AI being a vehicle for teams owning their business processes and broadly collaborating in ways we’d never succeeded before. We have an opportunity to redesign how we work - and no one operates on an island of innovation (or should)… which takes alignment, agreement, buy-in… This means that to get things done:

People have to connect... with People.  
AI is just a set of tools that enables what we want to accomplish.

Starting around 28:30 in the video, I spoke about really owning your processes… but I also talked about this being New (the people who will encounter this may not have seen you take ownership quite like this in the past). Sometimes in previous Digital Transformation efforts, our plans were given “to” us when the Strategy teams and the big Consulting firms were driving the bus. In the future, there’s an opportunity for the business to decide their role, and this is where grace comes in. You see, everyone might not get the memo that the business now feels empowered. Even if they do, it’s a new “experience” in how teams have previously engaged. There’s a lot that will be new, for a lot of us. We all need an extra helping of Grace in the next year.

What helps with Grace?

• Patience. And what helps with Patience, is a mindset that everyone’s intentions are always for the highest and greatest good. always believe that people

• Clear Communication. Don’t shy away from your plan, communicate it. As Brené says, “Clear is kind.”

There will be lots of change in the next year. Nearly all of it will be awesome. Most of it will be a little bumpy to execute. Look at people’s intentions as positive, believe in the best, communicate clearly… and we will all get to a better place, #together.