It’s too late to panic, your accountant and doctor are already using AI
• Despite already-pervasive use of artificial intelligence, the insight that humans provide is hard to replicate
If you are one of those idiots like me who saw artificial intelligence (AI) as a looming challenge, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI by Arthur Goldstuck will be a welcome wake-up call.
AI has been around for ages, and we already use it without realising it.
“If you use a smartphone, you use AI. The moment you turn to Google Maps, Apple Map or Waze to give you directions and help you avoid heavy traffic, you are using AI. When you use predictive text in WhatsApp and iMessage, and grammar-correction tools in Gmail and Word, you are using AI.”
Who knew it? I am an AI aficionado!
“AI is able to draw on all of recorded human knowledge to deliver anything, from an answer to an article to an archive of wisdom. To anyone. Anywhere. At any time... AI will make us all superhuman if we want it,” Goldstuck informs us in this timely and unexpectedly readable and accessible book.
FASTER
We see how technology is spreading everywhere — from video-assisted refereeing to the monitoring of the buzzing worlds of the bee colonies, how it has decimated the record industry and how it can write book reviews. Not as well as the contributors to Business Day, of course, but certainly a lot faster.
What is invaluable about this authoritative and fact-crammed handbook is its balance. It gives a warts-and-all account of AI
— which can most simplistically be defined as the process of computers becoming more like we humans.
Of course, the impact on business is vital. Just look at what it can do for number crunchers: “Accountants are using AI to automate data entry, reconciliation and auditing. That’s a given, and any practitioners not doing so are already falling behind their peers. But it goes further: “AI software can now automatically identify errors in financial records and flag potential fraud,” Goldstuck informs us.
The medical uses are also amazing — monitoring your heartbeat and stress levels, helping to detect cancer and control diabetes, not to mention remote surgery. Then there is prescription and treatment guidance.
This isn’t some future vision. The watches that monitor your heart (and may even tell you the time as well) are on sale already.
AI isn’t like the trucks approaching the Port of Durban. It is in the fast lane, whizzing forward at breakneck speed.
However, there is some assurance that the human touch, that edge that we fleshand-blood folk have over the robots and computers, is likely to still be needed.
“Left to itself, an AI doctor could misread an X-ray or prescribe the wrong medication. An AI accountant could make a mistake that results in a massive tax liability or be manipulated to commit fraud. An AI engineer could make a mistake, due to missing a critical piece of data, like an obscure environmental factor, that leads to a building collapse. An AI lawyer could present evidence in a way that is so generic that it fails to convince a judge or jury. Human oversight will remain a critical element for professionals using AI,” writes Goldstuck. Phew!
He also notes how efforts to replace humans in interactions with chatting computers, called chatbots, can often lead to frustration.
“Discovery Health, for example, added a chatbot to its mobile app in 2020, welcoming visitors to its help page with the message: ‘Hi, I’m the Discovery service bot. Ask me something.’ In reality, it was an invitation to become trapped in a maze of menu options that seem specifically designed NOT to answer any questions that were not part of the main menu.”
Having struggled and failed to get one of these chatty but thick computers to send me a tax certificate, I know the feeling all too well. Long live the call centre, run by a flesh-and-blood, living and breathing, belching and farting human beings.
TROLL
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and its rebranding as X has brought new concerns about the toxic side of social media, and Goldstuck helpfully reminds us about a Twitter/ Microsoft “large language model chatbot ... that, within 16 hours of its release, had become like the average Twitter (now X) troll: a racist, sexist neo-Nazi of the kind that has driven many people from the platform”.
Having recently booked costly return tickets to and from the UK, I learnt something rather useful — but a bit too late.
Goldstuck informs us that if your browser history shows you are “regularly comparing prices for specific flights, you may start seeing higher prices than someone going in for the first time, based on the thinking that you badly need to buy that ticket”. Now he tells me.
He also discusses progress towards a self-driving car and relates his hair-raising test in a model that went some way towards this, enabling him to take his hands off the wheel.
Some of the time.
As he puts it: “Cars of the future must get us where we want to go, and not the other way around. Like the smartphone, the car must become more intelligent, convenient and supportive of our lives. For this reason, the autonomous vehicle, or selfdriving car, is not only a good idea but an essential one.”
Goldstuck notes that progress in auto automation should be measured by how soon these new technologies will become standard in less swanky cars.
When trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel unveiled his new white paper on electric vehicles, he noted that car mechanics need increasingly sophisticated skills to deal with the electronic systems in smarter and smarter cars.
The advance of AI will threaten jobs, especially in healthcare, manufacturing, energy, transportation and food production. However, we read that all these sectors “will see a massive demand for new jobs and skills”.
“Where robots ... take over mundane and repetitive tasks, they allow humans to focus on roles that add far greater value than merely following routine.”
TWIN
One chapter of this AI handbook, we are told, was produced by Arthur Goldstuck’s twin brother Charles Goldstuck, a music industry high-flyer. But is there such a twin brother? Given his understanding of AI, did Arthur not just conjure up Charles, and instruct his computer to compile the chapter in his name?
Have the two brothers been seen together in the same room? If there are pictures of them together, were they composed using AI?
Whatever the truth, this chapter on AI and music is informative.
“According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), global recorded music revenues experienced an approximately 50% decline from 2000 to 2010,” we read.
“The compact disc ushered in a golden commercial age for the music industry. But possibly its most disruptive impact was laying the groundwork for the widespread acceptance of digitally recorded music. This started a chain of events that would nearly destroy the commercial viability of the music industry, and eventually result in the widespread use of adaptive AI.”
I had dreaded reading this book, given my own feeble, technophobic understanding of technology and the AI revolution, but I found it invaluable, learning what has already been achieved and the potential and dangers of AI in the future. As Goldstuck concludes: “The future is ready for us, and we must be ready for the future.”
AI ISN’T LIKE THE TRUCKS APPROACHING THE PORT OF DURBAN. IT IS IN THE FAST LANE, WHIZZING FORWARD AT BREAKNECK SPEED