Why AI needs another AI
Why AI needs another AI: using anthropology intelligence to make sense of a world in flux
On Wednesday 8th May 2024 I had the great pleasure to attend the Annual Lecture given at the Margaret Anstee Centre, Newnham College, Cambridge.
Gillian Tett OBE is Provost of King's College, Cambridge, while also writing a weekly column for the Financial Times on global finance and business. She was awarded an OBE for services to economic journalism in 2024, and is author of, among other books, Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life and the New York Times best seller Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe. She has an undergraduate degree and PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
Gillian stated that classical anthropology "allows us to immerse ourselves in other points of view and see yourself afresh.Through the dance between the familiar and the strange we are able to see 'social silence'."
Looking at technology, and now generative AI, which are predominantly computer and quantitative science, as an anthropologist, enables us to see some home truths - who creates the models, technology tribal patterns and biases. We now have the opportunity for computer science and social science to produce 'Augmented Intelligence' which is desperately needed in the era of AI.
Gillian stated, throughout her lecture, the importance of TRUST, and of course as knowledge management and innovation management practitioners, we all know and espouse that well, and stressed how 'horizontal trust' and 'distributed trust' have emerged, with examples, like being prepared to trust and use unknown Uber drivers, or the increased importance of preferring peer rating.
What excited me was Gillian's explanation of the emergence of 'GenP' or Generation Playlist, a term which I had not heard of before, and GenP's way to determine the truth. They are less interested in listening to authority but use peer groups. They see themselves with rights to be more self centred in the world that they can customise to their own desires. They can now pick themselves from several sources of information and create their own 'playlist'.
It used to be the case that people had limited choices, for say music, by attending a concert or listening to a radio where others decided on the content. Now, with their unique playlist, GenP can customise, assemble, and combine content anytime, anyplace, anywhere. For food, most of us, at school dinner or at home for Sunday lunch, had a 'take it or leave it' choice, but now everywhere provides buffet lunches where all can pick and mix. For jobs, we all were used to 9-5 and corporate ladders. I remember, several years ago, Professor Charles Handy, from the London School of Economics, starting to talk about this need to create a portfolio of jobs, paid, unpaid, purpose driven or otherwise, to much better suit our personal and professional needs and desires. Now GenP, are looking to pick and mix their jobs, activities and even their customised politics.
Generation Playlist can now, not only better create their own identities, but are creating their own customised tribes.
And so now, Gillian suggests, this customised GenP way of seeing the world is being amplified by AI as AI can specifically do for you, what you want. In other words, GenP are now able, and will prefer, to work with their own created and trusted bots! If you like, GenAI is now creating for GenP, according to Gillian, "extraordinary energy leaps. GenAi is the most empowering era and we now live with a new fashion of combining genders".
But Gillian alerts us to threats and not just new beter ways and opportunities. The power of 'Influencers' and only 'hanging out' with the same people. Gillian noted that sometimes we anthropomorphise our family dogs, especially in western cultures, and this becomes the only way for some families to talk together! I resonated with the suggestion that perhaps "we don't choose, as the bots can observe for us and choose for us, and we may become more lazy'.
The lecture ended by suggesting that we, and especially Gen Playlist of course, will be creating our own Spotify like playlists as our life stories.
I found the title of the Annual Lecture 'Why AI needs another AI: using anthropology intelligence to make sense of a world in flux" to be so intriguing and we can certainly dive much deeper here. I found this lecture to be so inspiring and stimulating.
The Annual lecture was followed by a reception in the Principal's Lodge Garden, where I was able to meet and talk with a Cambridge University Researcher and Materials Scientist, together with a passionate seasoned Fleet Street journalist, extraordinary!
Ron Young
Latest book: The Global Knowledge and AI Driven Economy
April 2024