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The Smart Way To Use Artificial Intelligence
It helps to think of technology as clothing. In the past we killed animals and wore their skins to protect ourselves from the elements. As our knowledge and skills evolved so did our needs. Just like with clothes, we use technology not only for practical things but also for social signalling.
Just like with almost every kind of technology we’ve used in the past, from the spinning jenny and its Luddite detractors to coffee and refrigeration and those who resisted them the “new” both excites us and frightens us. It presents us with opportunities and threatens to upend the ‘traditional’ way of doing things.
Smart algorithms and artificial intelligence are no different. To say that we have a choice in whether we use this technology or not is sophistry. Our world is made of data. We use data the same way we’d use social cues and behavioral signals in the past: to understand what people do and try to infer why.
Much of that activity is upended and discussed within the boundaries of analysis done for marketing purposes but a lot of it spills over on activities we’ve always engaged in, in the past: navigating the present, projecting into the future and understanding the world, in the process.
As the world becomes more abstract our ability to create more refined layers of entities representing it…
