We’re living through a period of technological schizophrenia when it comes to artificial intelligence. A huge share of the talk we hear, and take part in, has no grounding in reality whatsoever. Three examples.
The doctor’s visit
At a conference I heard someone talking about how AI will revolutionize the healthcare experience, the visit to the doctor. We’ll record the consultations, all automatic, AI-assisted diagnosis for the physician.
The last time I went to a specialist, on top of making me wait an hour and a half because he was also working inside a hospital, the visit itself lasted ten minutes, nine of which he spent trying to pull up my medical record on the computer. He charged a fee off the books, then the secretary took even more time to write me a slip that I then had to carry to the pharmacist, and the pharmacist was annoyed because a lady wanted to use the scale and couldn’t get it to turn on. Then at some point I handed him the prescription, he gave me back a slip to be signed, so I had to go back yet again to actually collect the medication.
In all this redundant paper shuffling, with people working according to dysfunctional habits, where exactly does artificial intelligence fit? Where do you put it? You sound like someone saying “I’m the best pizza maker in the world, but there’s no oven.” You’re talking about something that has prerequisites which don’t exist. The prerequisites for AI are the presence of data and interoperability between that data. There are services the intelligence has to plug into to do things, but those services aren’t there. So what are we even talking about?
The job interview
Another example. Once I took part in an interview at a multinational, more for fun, to mess around really, because I wanted to see if I could turn the tables and ask them questions about how they worked, and show off a bit. In reality they didn’t let me talk, I didn’t immediately realize I was there just to waste my time, they brushed me off and sent me packing.
I remember that to take part in this interview at a tech multinational they sent me a 20-page PDF that I had to print, fill out, scan, and send back. No form, no CV standards, no autofill based on the CV. And then this absurd PDF asking for information about my family, a truly nauseating thing. In that HR flow, where exactly does AI sit? What does artificial intelligence have to do with this medieval routine where you swap a PDF, fill it in, scan it, sign it, send it, and then go to an interview where they act as if giving you a job is doing you a favor?
Lawyers and civil cases
More examples still: lawyers and lawsuits. Someone wrongs you for a few thousand euros. It unfortunately happened to me. You go to the lawyer, you talk, they try to help you, and it turns into: is it worth suing if the most you’ll recover is those few thousand euros, and most of that money actually goes to the lawyer? The only satisfaction you get is that you won, while meanwhile you’ve been under stress for three months, four, six, a year, two years, on principle. But in reality you’ve already thrown the money away regardless, so you might as well take the loss and get on with your life. In all of this, what does technology have to do with it?
Maybe we should still be talking about digitization
If something as simple as asking for justice is this viscous, regardless of the medium it’s carried out on, then in my opinion we’re kidding ourselves a bit. There’s an enormous gap between the hyper-technology, the big international companies that can afford it because they already live on technology and their whole support structure is about offering purely technological services, so they move at full steam, and then there’s a total disconnect with everyday reality, with local realities, with the physics of things, with the bureaucracy of things.
And I believe that, instead of talking about artificial intelligence, we should maybe still be talking, in spite of everything, about digitization.
