Stay Up-to-Date on Humanistic Artificial Intelligence! July Edition
TD Publishing’s Monthly Update on Artificial Intelligence.
TD Publishing, a company that provides artificial intelligence educational programs, offers a monthly newsletter sharing the latest advancements in artificial intelligence to keep non-tech professionals and students up-to-date. Below is the July edition, written by Craig Gordon, founder of Don’t Count Us Out Yet and co-founder of TD Publishing.
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Two dueling predictions are forming pros and cons regarding what’s next for artificial intelligence.
Over the past month, I have read more than 100 blog posts and two books on artificial intelligence. It seems to me there are two camps forming on what might be in store for the future of artificial intelligence.
On one side, there are the cheerleaders, including Andrew Ng stating that very soon there will be developments in AI that will change the business and consumer world. These depend on the agents who create better and better systems for completing tasks, such as editing emails, writing communications, doing repetitive tasks and brainstorming ideas. Both the cheerleaders of the consumer tech companies and the agents keep stating that you better start to understand how to use AI or you will be left behind.
I wouldn’t be mentioning that this is any different from before this month, but if you had to save one post, save the one below from Ethan Mollick. I regard him very highly, as he is stating he’s tested the new Claude and GPT chatbots. These are now at a point for various general uses where they can be as trusted as human interaction. You can read about this in his blog post below. To me, this is a material statement worth considering and makes the pro argument much stronger.
On the other hand, more and more people who I trust as experts in the AI field are coming forward with similar problems regarding hallucinations and fake data, which have yet to be solved. Combine that with Goldman Sachs experts stating they don't see how the trillions of dollars invested in AI are going to be able to get any real return on investment. Beyond this, MIT’s Daron Acemoglu stated only 1/4 of the expected areas to be automated will be ready in the next 10 years. This will drastically reduce AI's impact, and you will start seeing a real reason there might be another AI winter arriving soon. Other similar studies are coming out reinforcing noted expert Gary Marcus’ concern, and you can read more about it in this great blog post below by Michael Spencer.
What do I think? I’m no expert, just a reader of too many posts that have lots of noise in them, but it seems to me there are relevant, critical problems present. New ideas are needed to correct these problems rather than just having 2 million people in the Philippines correcting AI mistakes on an item-by-item basis.
I can’t say what the future holds, but I can say that enough advancements have been made using AI and more will come. Therefore, understanding artificial intelligence and its strengths and weaknesses is a skill set you must have.
Drones with AI capabilities are changing the way wars are fought and creating advantages for the smaller, more nimble armies.
One area in which AI is quickly making advancements is the use of drones in warfare. In Ukraine and Iran, drones are making huge advancements for the armies of both sides. Ramping of drones with AI is going to happen very quickly in the military as other technological advances will start to spill over to the commercial sector. For businesses, tasks such as watching for theft, calculating inventory values and supply chain predications with drones will scale big in the next 12-24 months.
Some ideas put forward by Ted Gioia for the music industry can be easily translated for CPAs to use!
One of my favorite writers on Substack is Ted Gioia, who thinks about things in different ways. I always tell my friends he is a great read, and although he specializes in music thoughts, he always makes me think outside the box. He recently posted an article, “How the Music Business Can Tame the Dangerous AI Dragon,” with five core principles. After reading this article and thinking about teaching CPAs in continuing education, I've changed his model for business purposes.
CPAs need to align themselves with their AI customers, not AI companies and consultants. These are your natural partners. Represent them and don’t give advice on any products you think would not add value to your customers or yourself.
Demand full disclosure when using AI in your company or with any of your clients. Trust and Verification, trust and verification… How many times do we have to say that is truly the competitive advantage for CPAs in businesses. Don’t lose it by trusting anyone else before you put your stamp of approval on it and not knowing why.
Support AI as a tool to be used by your clients and yourself, not as a way to suck revenues away from you. The key to using AI right now is experiment, experiment and experiment. And if you find you have developed a new tool in using AI for business purposes or new prompt queries that do a better job, keep them proprietary. Get the value for yourself.
Refuse to work with AI companies that are looking to replace CPAs with AI agents. We talk about agents vs. tools in our CPA course and agents just aren’t there yet. Remember, AI moves data directly to intelligence whereas humans move data to information (which then uses meaning, truth and accuracy filters humans have that AI does not) before creating action-based intelligence. The current generative language approaches available can’t do this, so stay alert and refuse to help with these scenarios.
Celebrate what CPAs do in business; nurture it, invest in it and market it. History tells us how many times humans try to manipulate numbers and make money the old fashioned scam way. There will be new scams, old scams revived by AI and bad AI agents. Just think of the crypto markets right now and how billions of people are losing their savings. CPAs are one of the front line warriors to help catch and stop this. I still can’t believe CPAs aren’t calling for a role in regulating crypto.
Here’s a salute to all you CPAs, and I hope you realize how important you are to getting artificial intelligence developed the right way.
Have a great July and stay in touch!
My very best, Craig and the TD Publishing Crew