I have a pocket-sized AM/FM transistor radio in my bathroom.
It’s an old school relic.
It is simple, over-the-air analog and battery-powered. It has been my trusted and reliable companion every morning as I get ready with a dose of the day’s news, weather and traffic headlines. That is until recently, when the volume would randomly spike to deafening levels and I’d have to turn it down.
It kind of reminds me of the deafening hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) these days.
Now, I’m by no means a Luddite. Having worked in the hi-tech industry all of my life, I’m no stranger to the benefits that advances in technology have brought society.
However, I’ve developed some AI hesitancy not because I don’t believe in its potential, but rather because it feels like we’re just blindly putting all our faith and eggs in the AI basket without thinking twice about it.
From writing school essays or impersonating loved ones to driving us around, there doesn’t seem to be any limits on what AI can do.
Whatever humans can do, AI can do it faster!
But is faster always better?
Going faster without knowing why and where you’re going is going nowhere.
What happens to self-sufficiency and self-determination when AI becomes our constant crutch?
We’ll allow AI to make all the decisions for us.
What really concerns me is how some Agile luminaries have become smitten with the power of AI. They’ve used AI to develop digital avatars of themselves imbued with their years of Agile expertise. Need an Agile Coach to guide your Agile teams? No problem, you can just ask an Agile bot your question and in mere seconds, you’ll get an exhaustively researched answer without having to Google anything else or check with anyone else.
I don’t know about you but I enjoy taking the time to discover and learn on my own. With AI, there’s no need to “waste” that time. Leave the discovering and learning to AI. So that, we humans can have more time to… do what exactly?
At least Jeff Sutherland admits that “training AI is like bringing up a child”. And like raising a child, it’ll need the guidance of human adults to find its way to becoming an adult AI. That is why I subscribe to the AHAH principle (source: http://www.hivelearning.com) for AI which stands for:
- AI-assisted, Human-led
- AI-resourced, Human-checked
Sure AI may be able to assist Agile teams to become higher performing by resourcing the horsepower to instantly collect, crunch, analyze and interpret the vast amounts of data, metrics and statistics generated by the team’s performance into a series of recommended improvement actions. Who needs a team retrospective to improve when you can just ask your Agile Avatar?
At the same time when it comes to helping Agile teams, I believe it’s important for the human team members to help themselves first by raising their awareness and appreciation for the ‘why’ behind the AI recommendations. So that, the team can prioritize what and when they want to improve and check on the holistic fit (data and cultural) of the recommendations.
AI is still in its infancy and I for one am not ready to let it run my life in auto-pilot.
AI may be all grown up one day. Until then, I’d rather be its partner not its ward.
And when that day comes, let’s hope it doesn’t mean humans become children.
Back to my radio with its malfunctioning volume. I’ve done some research and it appears to be a problem with the potentiometer. Until ChatGPT sprouts hands to take apart and repair my radio, I’m happily resigned to the fact that I’ll have to take it apart and figure it out myself.
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