Charles Gutjahr
We don't need AI to increase productivity, just a button
In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about how Australia should use AI to increase productivity. I agree that AI could help productivity, but I also reckon AI is a distraction. A lot of the productivity benefits will come from making information and processes available online so that AI can use them, rather than from the AI directly. AI can't push a button or call an API that doesn't exist, so to make AI useful we'll have to create those things—and we will benefit from that whether or not we choose to use AI.
What I'm saying is that instead of rushing into an expensive and complex AI system to do things, why not start with a simple button that does the thing instead?
Scott Farquhar, Chair of the Tech Council of Australia, has actually hinted at that in a less-noted part of his recent National Press Club address (Disclaimer: Scott's company Atlassian acquired my company ThinkTilt in 2021, but we have no current connection). He's very much in favour of adopting AI, but he also asks for all levels of governments to make their services available via an API. I agree. APIs are how we make information and processes available online, and I think both business and government should focus on adopting APIs before AI.
Some specific examples:
- I signed up for a Zinzino oil subscription online, but later discovered their website doesn't provide a way to cancel. I had to contact customer support and ask them to cancel my subscription. An AI chatbot could be set up to handle that instead of a human customer support agent, but really a cancel button is all I needed.
- Every three months I spend a few minutes manually paying my rates to Merri-bek City Council. I'd rather that be paid automatically from my bank account, but that requires me to fill out and sign a paper form so I haven't bothered. I don't need an AI agent to handle this for me, all I need is an online form with a button to submit it.
- My Mac computer is regularly crashing with an MD_UNCORR_ERR error. I tried asking AI for help but it wasted my time with hallucinations. For AI to be helpful here it would need access to internal Apple documentation, but if we could access internal Apple documentation then all I would need is a search button rather than an AI.
- Scott Farquhar gave an example in his speech of an AI virtual agent offering him a replacement for a faulty product. Sure an AI agent can do that, but a single button to order a replacement would have been simpler and faster.
None of this is to say that AI won't have any benefits. Scott's example of AI skin cancer screening is a good example of something that can be done better with AI (after all, your body doesn't have APIs). But in many popular examples of how AI might revolutionise our lives the AI seems dispensable—the real revolution would be that business and government open up their processes and information. They don't need an expensive and complex AI solution to do that, a simple button would suffice.