I Don’t Call Myself An AI Expert, Because I’m Not

There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence is a transformative technology, but so were smartphones, broadband mobile internet, cloud computing, and many other things over the last 20 years. It is truly amazing to think that just 20 years ago none of it existed and life was significantly different. Yet still, none of those things had and outsized impact on productivity. The most likely scenario is that the future will look a lot like the past. Many things will be improved, some will be transformed, but adoption will be uneven, with some organizations and industries moving quickly to put new applications into practice, while most will lag behind. As progress fails to meet expectations, disappointment and disillusionment will set in, and focus and budgets will shift elsewhere. If you are truly an AI expert, with the knowledge and skill to shape the technology, you can still expect to do well. There will never be a shortage of organizations that need people to help leverage technology to do important work for them. But if you are just chasing the wave, you will be tying yourself to the ebbs and flows of market sentiment. The truth is that you can’t separate a technology from the environment in which it operates. As the philosopher Martin Heidegger argued, to build for the world you need to understand what it means to live in it. Technology becomes powerful when people who understand solutions learn to collaborate effectively with those who understand the problems that need to be solved. So while there is clearly a need for genuine AI experts, we still need experts in every other human domain. You’re much better off betting on yourself than betting on a technology you have little or no agency over.