We’re presently in a “new improved” phase of online communication, where AI and algorithms and BigData are being focused on the way we communicate online, especially as part of a group. Of course we have learned how “Giant Tech” companies like Facebook etc have used this sort of approach “behind the scenes” to “fuel and guide and constrict and commercialize” our social media connections. But that’s just part of what is a long road ahead to move our pre cloud communication into a whole new realm, where AI and our individual and group personas, personalities, psychologies, and sense of “who we are” become blended into one “thing”.
Another way to describe this might be augmented communication, where cloud tools and plain old humanity are integrated to the point of something seamless…that has dramatically new and important differences from what “we used to be”. As in a recent previous PSA web post on AI assisted ethics and polity, we can also look at how “People Analytics” changes the workplace, and learning, among many other aspects of our civilization.
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There’s a whole other series of posts on what this implies for learning as members of a “cloud group” such as a MOOC or other Social Learning Construct”…but perhaps the changes implied by the new blend of AI and “people” into one thing, can be sketched in a bit below. These early efforts such as Slack (see below) “hint” at what’s to come, and help us imagine it.
Some visionaries say learning itself is something completely different when facts are blended into our consciousness in encyclopedic and searchable ways to the extent that they become, in a real sense, part of us, part of all of us. Then knowledge is something different…and learning is mastering how to make practical and efficient and intuitive use of this mass of data far too big for our previous consciousness. TMI must be mastered, and it will occur through learning new ways of integrating our brains with AI and new ways of being in the world, where knowledge is less a statement than a field of swirling data points. Yet somehow still human.
We’re also working deeply on search, not just in terms of the retrieval of documents, files, and messages that you already know exist. We also look at search in terms of searching for topics that you’re interested in and surfacing people who might be experts in those areas within the company, then pointing you towards the channels where they’re having those conversations. There’s a lot we can do by having this really large corpus of information to draw from.
To the extent that we are able to offload those capabilities that computers are so good at, and that human beings are fundamentally lousy at — like comparing a hundred million things all at once and finding things that are similar or remembering everything perfectly forever — we’re all better off.
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Which is to say, we are presently already deeply integrated into AI, and AI into us, but there’s much development needed to get to where we are ever more integrated into a seamless whole with our newest technology. As it has always been. Civilization changes to adapt and arrange itself to accommodate large changes in our technology, and the implications of those changes take a long time to unspool, and for adjustments to be made. Many are still of the opinion that the automobile was a bad idea for civilization…but no one can honesty say it hasn’t changed almost everything. And the same equation holds true for an economy and civilization dependent on electricity, and now AI.
People Analytics is one way of learning those new ways. It has been developed and applied in the workplace by, for one example, “Slack” the communication/ organization app discussed below by its founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield at a Wharton People Analytics conference this past May of 2018.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Channeling-the-inevitable-Slack-and-the-future-of-work.pdf”]