Do Not Fear Artificial Intelligence
Put it to Work
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Not everyone is an early adopter of technology. In fact, early adopters make up only 13.5 to 28.5 percent of our population, depending on whether you rely on Investopedia (13.5%) or Pew Research (28.5%) for your numbers. When it comes to companies and industries, the percentages are even smaller, and convincing an industry to change its norms and practices is never easy. There are two ways of looking at early adopters: as people who pay a tax for trying things before they are ready for prime time, or as people with the first mover advantage.
I have had experience with three recalcitrant industries during my career. But now that they see their
The first, real estate development, did not seem at first to need digital transformation because at the time it was a field-based business and most of the people in it did not sit at desks all day long. Desktop productivity software, which came along in the ‘90s, didn’t help people in construction, beyond Excel, so real estate chose to wait for technologies to be designed specifically for the industry, and those took a while to arrive and mature. 3-D modeling changed that mindset.
The second laggard industry, healthcare,was late to the “digital transformation" because human lives could be affected in every change of workflows. There was the Hippocratic oath, which says “first do no harm.” Then there were special legal requirements for data security and privacy, and then the huge amount of profit that was still being captured by the industry even using the tried-and-true paper charts and fax machines. The more hot startups tried to push on the system, the more it pushed back, saying “ Let’s not kill anyone in this race for efficiency.”
The third late adopter was education, stymied by teachers who were not up-to-date in technology, principals who did not want to take on any more professional development, and parents who were uncomfortable when their students learned something they did not already know. I can remember trying to convince my daughter's journalism teacher when she was in high school that she should probably teach the students desktop publishing. I even donated an Apple computer to the school, but I don’t think the school ever used it because the teacher didn’t know how. The journalism class continued to use waxed paper paste ups for the student newspaper long after desktop publishing replaced that legacy method in the real world the teachers were preparing their students to inhabit.
This refusal to embrace new technologies always drove me nuts, so imagine my surprise when I saw that the three industries who are most quickly adapting chat GPT were those same three industries.
In home building, 3-D modeling has taken over even in the field. You can now walk the lines of your new home as it is projected on the home site for you and alter the setbacks and the walls. You can also see a 3-D elevation and a digital model. No one has to know how to read blueprints anymore. The obvious sales and marketing benefits to the consumer have forced adoption of many visual-based technologies.
As for health care, Chat GPT has already been adapted and trained with a new healthcare vocabulary that can help doctors make decisions about diagnoses, interpret imaging studies and produce case notes. There’s even a free chatbot called Dr.Gupta that can bring back medical information if you want to take a look. (don’t substitute Dr. Gupta for a real doctor just yet).
But Chat GPT has taken hold the fastest in education. Remember Khan Academy? It is used by almost all schools now, and Sal Khan, the young founder, decided that rather than be displaced by artificial intelligence, he would use it to provide every child an individual tutor. He has launched KhanMigo, a chat bot for education, and students can use it to answer specific questions and get information about subjects that are giving them problems. You should watch his recent Ted talk if you are a parent, or even if you aren’t, because artificial intelligence can end the problems of restless boys in the classroom, parents who want control over what their children learn and read and gifted kids who are held back by classrooms full of kids that need to catch up before the they need to go ahead.
Ironically, some of the people who have always worked in technology and are early adopters are scared of what will happen in the future, and are trying to slow the use of artificial intelligence down, but the people in the late adopter industries, who have finally seen a solid use case for themselves in a.i. will not let them. They are forging ahead, trying to save lives, lower costs, educate people better and build better homes using this new technology. Undeterred by science fiction, they are driven by pragmatism.