A realist’s view of AI: easy to pick-up, hard to master

Artificial Intelligence aka AI has taken the world by storm, New Zealand included. While companies are wondering ‘how, where, and why’ to use it, its employees are already on ChatGPT-like tools daily.

AI is like a classic game of pinball. It looks fun, it has flashy features and fun sounds… And it is super easy to pick-up. Just press play and go have fun. But just as the classic game of pinball, it sure is hard to master. There is more behind that flashy facade than just shooting balls randomly against bumpers. There is reason to this madness.

Something that you will begin to understand the more you play it. Or the more you watch other people play it. Standing in that arcade with your pockets filled with coins while watching in awe someone to reach the machine’s high-score in no time.

Mastering the AI game

The same goes for the AI game. You have to understand what AI is, how it came about and what the pitfalls and advantages are. And of course how to enable the ethical use of AI.

It is Artificial for sure… Whether AI has true ‘intelligence’ is a conversation best saved for a Friday afternoon, ideally with a glass of (non-alcoholic) craft beer, great music and geeky company.

The basics: AI is just another tool in your toolkit

Unfortunately, a lot of people that are playing around with AI see it as “something” that can create a final product, a final thing that you can use in one of your business tasks. Just enter some words, press play (hello pinball machine reference) and presto a cooked result leaves the oven.

Well, it may look great at first that result from your AI prompt, it’ll look different when you take a closer look at it or see a few of these results next to each other. There is a reason why all of a sudden a lot of crappy website with similar wording – too many words and mostly the same kind of words – are popping up in the search results. Or in your Spotify playlist. Or in your favourite online game store. AI slop is everywhere.

How to use AI then?

That is the million dollar question. How to use AI in your workplace? As always with questions in the style of “how long is a piece of string?” the answer is simple: it all depends.

It depends on so many different factors. Your work. Your tasks. Your company. Your goals… Etcetera.

But it all starts with trial and error. See what it does, but by critical. Don’t just copy-paste the result of AI. Use the results of AI as an ingredient to create an amazing dish. Add your flair, your creativity, your skills and your personality to come up with a great end-result.

And while you are being critical, don’t just believe everything that AI spits out. It does make mistakes. You are the fact-checker of everything it spits out. Again, be critical.

Are you pro AI or against AI?

I’m realistic when it comes to AI. It is a new technology that has been thrown at us. No one truly knows what its long-term impact will be. What will work and what won’t work, that is the question. Also for the companies that are spending billions of dollars to get us to use AI systems while they are figuring out how to make money of it in the long run.

So yes, I do use AI as well in my business and private life. I actual encourage the ethical use of AI and love to explain this to friends and colleagues.

And no worries, this article was not created by AI but by a human, Martijn the Digital Geek. Although I may have used AI to run a spell-check and to see if the text had a nice flow and was easy to understand for non-geek peeps.

What are you using AI for?

As Digital Geek, I’m naturally curious. It’s in my geek DNA so I was playing around with this new technology before everyone was shouting: you have to try ChatGPT.

My main reason to use AI is to summarise long pieces of text. Well, AI can’t summarise things, it just shortens it so you can easily see the important items.

I use it to check HTML code when working on my websites, whether static or via WordPress. There are always fun tweaks to do and AI can check things or make suggestions for a better solution.

AI tools for small businesses

I also have automated the WhatsApp customer service system of Spaceships Rentals New Zealand by implementing a great AI system. Not that I am coding things, nah that is not my wheelhouse. I’m the one that finds great solutions and bridges the gap between tech teams and developers and the end user in the organisation. So we can come to a solution that works and is scalable, while also easy to understand & to use for staff and customers.

In our case, AI is now taking care of the first round of questions or issues that customers report via WhatsApp. It takes care of the “easier” questions so staff has more time for the complicated cases or the ones related to the booking system, all the issues where the personal touch of a human is needed. Let the bots handle the repetitive tasks.

For small businesses AI tools can be really beneficial as you can automate the tasks you don’t have the manpower for. Just keep in mind that most AI projects are not ‘set and forget’. An AI customer service project like the one mentioned above needs monitoring and regular tweaking.

Why? Well, because AI’s reasoning is black and white. For example, in the campervan rental case… There are sometimes moments where items that should be included with the campervan are missed (we’re only human) or aren’t working as expected due to normal wear and tear. When an included item like a gas stove malfunctions, AI has the power to tell customers to buy a new one at a local store, save the receipt and get reimbursed for it.

But in that reasoning flow of small missing or malfunctioning items, an issue like “we left the petrol cap at the fuel station” leads to the same outcome for AI: get a new one and will reimburse you. So an extra rule needs to be added to cover situations where the customer has lost an item and is responsible for replacing it. You will need to keep updating AI’s rules and training data.

More AI in digital marketing

Well there is a lot more that I use AI for in digital marketing. The use of AI basically changes weekly. And there are so many business-related tasks & projects I cannot talk about due to their confidential nature.

Beware of the pitfalls of AI

Just look around you and you’ll see so many people stepping into the pitfall of AI. From using it to process sensitive customers information to copy-pasting its output as final result.

Always remember that what you put into public systems is saved somewhere and may be re-used elsewhere. It’s not your personal buddy or coach that won’t tell you secrets. It was trained on massive amounts of public data – and some of it wasn’t collected in such an ethical way… Another Friday afternoon discussion.

Don’t become complacent and lazy when using AI. Be on your toes and stay critical.

Use it in moderation… Like any good craft beer or wine. Quality over quantity.

What are your plans with AI, dear reader?

How are you using AI in digital marketing? What are you doing with it? What are your worries? Is ethical use of AI a concern for you? Have you thought about all these things and answered these questions for yourself.

AI can add value for sure, if used thoughtfully and integrated well. Pop a coin in the AI Pinball Machine and see what your score (results) will be. Life is like a pinball machine: you never know where the ball will end up… And maybe you’ll get an extra ball.

Game on, pinball and AI fans.

I love AI. I love you, New Zealand.