Having explored the role of what AI is in context and how it is to be used successfully in combination with our other technologies, it must be in balance with our people and processes. Only when you consider the three as the legs of a milking stool do we understand the importance of all three legs being equally strong and supportive, or the stool fails?
This week, let us look at how to successfully marry the Throuple for the best results. As we now know, each element cannot stray from this partnership and be successful alone.
People are emotional and, therefore, prone to emotional responses; technology is logical; there is only A + B = C, so to speak. Somehow the Process has to bond that emotional energy with the logical flow.
People, and remember, we are all people (except ChatGPT, which is no doubt being trained against this). As such, we are under the emotional sway of our feelings. No matter how much we train and prepare there will still be that little voice saying something and steering an emotional response.
Technology isn’t here to take over the world; remember, it is logical. It has no drive, no emotional hang-ups. Rather it exists to enable. Technology may be directly able to record information (a database tool or a form), but that in itself will not do anything, there is no response emotional or otherwise.
The Process unites the two. It is the element that makes technology make sense to people it is the form that is presented when something happens, captures your responses and then triggers someone to do something about it. Technology is required for the Process to work, but it existed before and after it. Likewise, the people involved (the form filler and the worker) only need to follow the process, not understand the technology. The process is like a translator.
AI is a Technology first and foremost; many are treating it as an element of their process toolkit, but that just is not true. When we recognise the signs and place them with technology, we see that it does allow our technology to close the gap filled by Process, but it cannot replace process. The current iteration of AI is, broadly speaking, if this, then that engines. All too often we people get in trouble because we do not recognise that we too are if this then that engines, we may be able to change the “That” with training and we may not feel comfortable abstracting our actions to that extent, however as the saying goes “The truth hurts” sorry. Going further by acknowledging AI as a technology we can begin to adapt our Process to support us (or our people).