We all love to hear about stupid AI mistakes. Whether it is bad output from some chatbot or someone using AI in a careless way. For example, a yearbook where someone had left some of the chatbot verbiage in place. Or images obviously created by AI that someone tried to pass off as a real photograph.
Some of the human side of these events are malicious. Some are carelessness. All are learning opportunities. We mock and laugh at the mistakes and get angry about the maliciousness.
Setting aside the bad actors for a moment, let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. This amazing new technology is changing many things. In order for our society to understand all the good possibilities, I think we need to experience the edge cases. The cases where AI doesn’t make sense or gets used badly.
This experimentation has to take place. If it doesn’t, we won’t find the positive.
If social media existed when the automobile was invented, can you imagine all the stories about stupid people that did silly things with them? Just like with now, we wouldn’t hear about all the people doing good work because that isn’t how social media operates.
This is obviously still a work in progress, but the next time you see someone doing something silly with AI, in addition to wishing they had your common sense about putting their mistakes out into the world, maybe consider that they also were brave enough to try.