Faster ways to make mistakes
Swinging a hammer all day is hard work. When I was in my early 20s, I spent time building houses on Nantucket. A beautiful setting, but the reality is, construction is a tough gig. And like many professions, technology has lightened that load. Nail guns – air and electric- have been a productivity revolution. In the hands of a skilled worker, nail guns make the work easier and faster. In the hands of a newbie or weekend warrior, however, they often prove to be a way to make mistakes faster, complicating and adding work. The current state of AI has that same sort of feel. The hype promises easy expertise, but the reality is all too often a faster, easier way to make mistakes.
Hallucinations. Authoritative bullshit. Slop: euphemisms abound for the ways in which a poorly managed GPT can make mistakes. Just as simply swapping out hammers for nail guns is a recipe for manifold disaster, a wide swath of businesses are finding that simply inserting AI into a business process is not a road to ROI. Success with AI requires a basic understanding of what it is and is not. A nail gun can do the same job as a hammer, but it is a very different tool and requires a very different approach to realize success.
Hand a hammer to a newbie and you get some bent nails and a little wasted time as they ramp up. Hand out AI tools across the business expecting magic and you may end up with a raft of tricky troubles and reputational harms. The potential, and likely, damages of hasty AI adoption go beyond fines and lawsuits, but more on that in another post.
I saw AI’s possibility, and its potential for problems, early on and determined that the best way to get the most out of the technology was to give it the focus it requires. It’s why Wetware Studios exists outside, but alongside, my original content marketing agency KingFish + Partners. A nail gun is not a hammer. Putting in place the measures – dedicated prompt engineers, expert humans in the loop to police and improve output – ensures our use of AI for clients delivers great content at scale, without the mistakes.
