Ben Andrews
Head, Digital Experience
Ad: Hey Ben, want a professional AI-generated profile pic for LinkedIn?
Ben: AI-Generated? Count me in!
I was lucky enough to attend the second annual Generative AI Summit at University of Technology Sydney last week. I attended at the promise of innovative use cases of AI and hoped I could walk into the office with newly acquired AI skills, ready to automate my daily tasks and those of my clients. The reality was actually the opposite.
While AI governance formed a large part of the discussion (yawn), another consistent theme rang true over the two days. Several of the speakers pointed out that we’re at a critical juncture when it comes to AI. The initial excitement and hype around this tech has somewhat faded, and now we’re all eagerly anticipating how it will truly transform our lives and work. However, the reality is that the AI solutions and products promised are far from finished.
Associate Professor Angel Zhong held a great session on the rise of “AI washing.” This term refers to how some individuals and businesses are jumping on the AI bandwagon, capitalising on our excitement over AI’s potential and dressing up ordinary tech with fancy AI buzzwords to make them seem more innovative than they actually are – like AI-generated professional looking LinkedIn profile photos!
Professor Zhong highlighted the importance of skepticism in this new era, where every day, a new digital product claims to have AI functionality, often with little more than “AI” tacked onto the name.
The summit sponsor who had to present after Professor Zhong definitely drew the short straw. Like most of the sponsors at the event, he was there to pitch his AI product. However he was now doing so to an audience brimming with skepticism. I’m sure his product was solid, but convincing this crowd just got a little harder!
My takeaway – expecting AI to magically solve all our work-related challenges is naive. What is clear is that it’s essential to establish a basic framework for generative AI use in our businesses and encourage staff to explore its use. Empowering your teams to harness this technology can lead to greater discoverability and boost productivity – sometimes in small ways, other times in big ones. This isn’t about being lazy at work, it’s about improving efficiency and freeing up time to focus on the things that deserve more of our time.
Does it help alleviate some pain points and lighten the cognitive load? Absolutely. The key is not to be swayed by grand promises, but to extract genuine business value from the technology. This is where I’ll be guiding our clients.
If only I’d known about AI washing before clicking that ad. But hey, we’re here now, so I guess I need to decide which profile pic to go with.
