Knowledge & Machines Docks
This summer, I shared a few gems that I have enjoyed on my travels.
One of the experiences that strikes many chords is the exhibition entitled in French ‘IA : Double Je’ (translated: AI : Double I or Me?) at the Quai des Savoirs in Toulouse, France.
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des savoirs, Toulouse, France.
The exhibition has five theme modules: Introduction to AI, Data and Learning, Imaginary AI, Social/Environmental Impact, Human-Machine Interaction. The interactive and artistic installations for experimenting with testimonies from AI experts and debates on ethical issues.
I appreciate the multidisciplinary approach: science, art, philosophy, sociology, climate change and technology. Read more in the press kit (in French). By the way, there are a number of podcast episodes in French to listen to if you are curious about AI.
“🌞 It’s summer! Why not put our #podcast Detour vers le futur in your ears on the beach, in the mountains or in the countryside? Throughout this 4th season, Laurent Chicoineau and Marina Leonard have been talking to some fascinating scientists on the subject of artificial intelligence. Along with the rest of the team, they’ve put together a little best-of of around twenty minutes, to make you want to listen to everything else!” ― Quai des Savoirs
This exhibition allows me to experience, learn and reflect on why, how and where GenAI is embedded in life and work.
Let me share deep thoughts, curations, observations, experiences and two cents on how we are in the docks of knowledge and machines.
I have often found art and technology exhibitions to be an immersive experience, as I shared with my immersive art experience in Bordeaux. It is also a way to reflect and recalibrate on the discipline and practices we have with tools to work and learn continuously, on our own and collectively.
Interactions & Trust with Conversational Machines
“I love seeing Jane’s list every year! Curious how AI will change this list year after year as the tech matures and evolves 👀” ― Koreen Pagano
In her analysis of the top tools for learning 2024 Jane Hart wrote:
“There were 1,599 votes in the 18th annual tools survey from which the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2024 was generated. By Category presents the tools on the list in 4 key areas. Here are 5 observations on this year’s list
1 – AI has taken off
Last year, ChatGPT jumped on the list in 4th place; and this year it has moved up to 2nd place – just behind the leader (YouTube). The highest new entry this year is another AI chat bot, Microsoft’s Copilot (in at #20) and there are 3 more AI chatbots new on the list: Perplexity (in at #47), Claude (in at #5) and Google’s Gemini (in at #53). Of the 6 new tools on the list this year – 5 are AI tools. This includes Clixie.ai (in at #96) to create interactive videos.”
How do you use GenAI tools, especially chatbots these days to work and learn? What is your relationship with conversational machines?
“When we talk to conversational machines, treating them with respect is part of our self-care as humans.” ― Sherry Turkle
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des Savoirs, Toulouse, France
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des Savoirs, Toulouse, France
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des Savoirs, Toulouse, France
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des Savoirs, Toulouse, France
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des Savoirs, Toulouse, France
Exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des Savoirs, Toulouse, France
Our interactions with conversational machines also involve trustworthiness.
In the description of the podcast episode, “Communication is competitive advantage with Jennifer Sertl” and hosted by the Institute of Internal Communication CEO, Jennifer Sproul, leadership communication expert Dominic Walters, and future of work expert Cathryn Barnard, here are some takeaways:
“Authentic leadership involves understanding one’s essence and values.
Soulful communication is essential in the workplace.
AI cannot replace the need for trust and human connection.
Language and conversation have the power to shift perspectives and shape leadership.
Creating a safe space for leaders to practice and learn is crucial. Authentic leadership requires curiosity, vulnerability, and the ability to listen and learn.
Leaders need to trust themselves and create environments where others can trust themselves as well.
The traditional MBA model and hierarchical structures may not be sustainable in the changing landscape of work.
Internal communicators play a crucial role in understanding the business model, using language effectively, and humanising the audience.
Effective leadership communication is about building community, asking great questions, and being true to oneself.”
What is left for humans if AI cannot replace the need for trust and human connection?
Quiz on an interactive screen in the exhibit IA Double Je at Quai des savoirs, Toulouse, France.
Human Uniqueness & Machine Support
“In short, we need to apply AI to work and then to people, and not the other way round.” – Bertrand Duperrin
Let’s go back to the use of GenAI tools. In Jane Hart’s Top Tools for Learning 2024, the most well-known and used GenAI tools in the GenAI tools universe appeared. From ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity to Gemini. Just the tip of the iceberg.
Have you heard of the GenAI Prism?
Brian Solis explains:
“The GenAI Prism organizes the landscape of generative AI companies that automate and augment how people create and work in their personal and professional lives.
More than a visualization of the most popular generative AI logos, the GenAI Prism offers a mental model to mindfully and intentionally approach prompts toward more intentional outcomes and insights.
The GenAI Prism is a reference guide that to prompt human creativity and imagination to collaborate with AI toward more thoughtful, effective, and extraordinary outcomes.
GenAI isn’t here to do the work of people or replace them, but instead it serves as a creative partner to augment human output. It enhances, accelerates, and boosts the work we do today while also allowing us to perform and create outputs we couldn’t do before.”
Did I read augment the output?
In an oldie, I pondered how machines might or might not augment human impact, if we stay curious. I noticed:
Do the usages of machines…
… do good in our world or for-profit only?
… help us to be a better version of ourselves?
… enable us to develop my human skills?
… contribute to reinventing ourselves and our organizations?
… foster the development of new experiences and our portfolio?
… challenge the status quo instead of reinventing the wheel?
… help us see the big picture with fresh eyes?
… understand the complexity of a group, a movement of people or a city like Vienna?
Are the futures here, but not evenly distributed? What is left for human beings to contribute and stand out with our human touch?
In her post “Work Fingerprints: The Human Touch in an AI World“, Taruna Goël wrote:
“I’d like to believe that my work fingerprint is unique to me or at least is distinctive enough that it reflects a certain way of thinking, problem-solving and decision-making. So, I want to do everything to preserve it and nurture it – now more than ever – and especially while augmenting my intelligence with AI tools. I want to retain and preserve the human touch in an AI world.“
Work fingerprints makes me think of what Nilofer Merchant calls ‘onlyness’.
“The first step to unlocking talent in the #SocialEra is celebrating something I’ve termed onlyness.
Onlyness is that thing that only that one individual can bring to a situation. It includes the journey and passions of each human. Onlyness is fundamentally about honoring each person: first as we view ourselves and second as we are valued. Each of us is standing in a spot that no one else occupies. That unique point of view is born of our accumulated experience, perspective, and vision.
Some of those experiences are not as “perfect” as we might want, but even those experiences are a source for what you create.
For example, the person whose younger sibling has a disease might grow up to work in medicine to find the cure. The person who is obsessed with beautiful details might end up caring about industrial design and reinvent how we all use technology.
The person who has grown up under oppression might end up advocating for freedom of speech and thus advance the condition of his country. This individual onlyness is the fuel of vast creativity, innovations, and adaptability.”
What does your onlyness look like?
How do we individually and collectively scope and activate it to thrive in the networked age?
Have you heard of Nilofer Merchant’s Onlyness Canvas and the Business Model You?
These tools can be helpful to recalibrate and identify what our strengths and raison d’être are to contribute and make a positive impact in your industry and the world. I see them as tools to do homework and deep work on ourselves to find and refine the true north, core approach, skill set, mindset and toolset to go deep in a fragmented world.
What capabilities do we need to develop and activate in the GenAI era?
Assistive Technology & Future Skills
GenAI tools can be seen and used as a personalised toolkit to assist and support the specialisation of human work. Not as a replacement.
When we use a conversational chatbot like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude or Perplexity to find inspiration, generate ideas and scenarios – in short, to stimulate creativity and drastically improve our productivity – we must not forget that we still need to think critically and have the vividness of human experience on the ground – be it remote, in person or both. Especially when we are in distributed teams and communities.
“I am glad to see this type of AI used as assistive technology, especially helping marginalized communities. I also am a bit more optimistic that this technology will be mostly on our devices and not using massive energy-consuming data centres.” ― Harold Jarche
How we use and integrate GenAI tools smoothly into our daily work and learning practices and flows – as we do with M365 and Google Workspace, or any open source productivity toolset – will help free up time and space to add value in unique ways – whether it’s content, a programme, an approach or a strategy that needs to be rethought at the end of the day. Like any prototype. It is important to get out of the building or conversational machine boxes to find out if things work or not.
If GenAI tools are more like assistants to help us reflect, evolve and refine our work and learning over time, they could not yet help us become more aware of our authenticity, neo-generalism and specialism. The stories we tell and share that resonate with our teams, network and communities still depend on us, not the algorithms.
“Narrative work is far more than words alone and far more than the probabilistic techniques of algorithms.” ― David Snowden HT @dangerousmeredith
AI Literacy & Critical Thinking
How do we develop AI literacy in our life and work?
I listened to the podcast episode: ELC 082: A Blueprint for AI Literacy in Learning and Development’s Conversation with Stella Lee and Connie Malamed.
Here are podcast’s notes:
The framework consists of seven key areas: AI fundamentals, data fluency, critical thinking/fact-checking, diverse AI use cases, ethics, AI pedagogy, and future of work. The framework is meant to be flexible and adaptable to different contexts and individual needs.
AI literacy involves not only knowledge and skills, but also the right mindset to engage with AI technologies.
Two particularly important areas for L&D professionals are AI pedagogy and AI ethics. And also for all learning innovators, educators, teachers, futurists, work futures designers and community builders, methinks.
There are three levels of competence in AI pedagogy:
Introductory Level
- Understand the various AI tools available for learning
- Recognize the current landscape of AI tools for education/L&D
- Identify both benefits and limitations of these tools
Intermediate Level
- Test and pilot one or two AI tools
- Develop evaluation metrics to assess AI tools’ effectiveness
- Collect stakeholder input when evaluating tools
- Recognize assumptions made about learning processes and theories
Advanced Level
- Identify new, transformative use cases for AI in L&D
- Formulate guiding questions for others to use in evaluating AI tools
- Contribute to furthering the field and deepening collective understanding
How do you detect the crap in the GenAI era?
Educational technologist Kathy Schrock writes:
“With the new web focus on AI, it is even more important that students need to know how to judge the information they are presented with.
Below, I have included downloadable versions of my guides to help students internalize how best to do this.”
Stella Lee also shares an AI Information Credibility Checklist to assess the trustworthiness of AI-generated content.
As I refine my personal knowledge mastery to stay relevant and fresh, I am exploring why and how we can become AI literate and think critically as we learn and apply what we can test and learn.
Like new media literacy in the early days of the internet, GenAI literacy seems to be gaining traction and usefulness in getting things done. Does it apply to value creation?
All the major MOOC platforms provide the basics of what AI is and how to use AI tools. From pathways to specific courses. To name a few:
TL:DR. Too long; didn’t do the course or curriculum?!
How about starting with this crystal clear short video brought by Common Craft?
Large Language Models (LLMs) Explained by Common Craft – 2’35
And this another by Common Craft’s video on critical thinking?
What effort, time, space, mindset, skills and tools do you use to think critically and deeply, and do?
It all starts with asking big questions.
Why? What assumptions? Are we sure? as shown in this video.
In a workshop on creativity and innovative project management that I host for cohorts of apprentices, I also nudge them to use the 4Ds or the double diamond of the creative process to challenge their clients’ pain points and their initial idea.
How can we embrace messiness and complexity?
Here are actionable insights from fellow workplace learning professionals:
⚡Unpopular opinion, perhaps: Speaking to a friend today about #AI, and I realized that “Messiness” is an inherent part of the process of creating using AI. One must engage with complexities, tackle inherent biases, and navigate through the frequently changing AI-based tools.
It’s an exciting journey that needs an optimistic and hopeful attitude. The messiness of making with AI brings richness and depth to the learning experiences. It aids in critical analysis and invites us to tackle challenges with a positive spirit. Let’s embrace the ‘mess’ as a part of the process for the abundance of learning it offers.” ― Garima Gupta
“The biggest AI mistake I see is writing poor prompts. The next biggest mistake? Treating it like a magic wand instead of a power tool. Here are 5 ways to work better with AI (beyond writing better prompts):” ― Srividya Kumar
In Jane Hart’s Top Tools for Learning 2024, there are a few uses of workplace learning professionals that caught my eyes.
Perplexity
“I use Perplexity to research topics for more in-depth information than ChatGPT.”
“AI-powered answer engine; essential with source citation”
ChatGPT
“used for analyzing and finding gaps in ideas, processes, content. Also used for chain prompting and creating hands-off assessments with rubrics that give feedback to students.”
Copilot
“Microsoft Copilot enhances my productivity by integrating seamlessly with my workflow and providing helpful suggestions.”
Gemini
“integrated in our workflow”
Claude
“for ideation, outlining, and revision”
By the way, do you know and use the GenAI chatbot from Duckduck Go for anonymous access to popular AI models, including GPT-4o mini, Claude 3 and the open-source models Llama 3.1 and Mixtral?
Happy Fall
As we have entered the autumn season, I wish you again what I share in this oldie:
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” ― Albert Camus
“Fall has always been my favourite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” ― Lauren DeStefano, Wither
Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet, shares:
“Autumn is my season, dear; it is, after all, the season of the soul.” ― Virginia Woolf
“Is this your season, too?”
Future Skills Docks
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