INTERVIEW
Cutting through the hype – will AI deliver in the workplace?
The launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT has put AI in the public consciousness like never before. But for professionals working with knowledge and information, Generative AI is something of an enigma – bringing opportunity and concerns. Here, researcher In Digital Education at the University of Manchester Mark Carrigan speaks to Rob Green about what we should be thinking about.
ACCORDING to many tech evangelists in Silicon Valley, AI has the potential to transform lives – not just in chang- ing how we work and live, but creating something fundamentally diff erent. It is easy to be seduced by the hype surrounding Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard alternative, but Univer- sity of Manchester’s Mark Carrigan says there are no guarantees about what Generative AI will deliver. While the interface and computing power is new, the technology that underpins these systems is relatively well established. Many knowledge and information reliant profes- sions are already using some form of AI in their practice, and so the rise of ChatGPT may not be the revolution some imagine. Mark, who also leads an MA programme in Digital Communication Technology for Education at University of Manchester, says: “I’m interested in how we develop a purposeful, deliberate relationship with new technologies – how do we do that socially and organisationally?
“Rather than leave adaptation to individ- uals experimenting, I want to know how organisations like universities can support the generation of cultures that enable us to talk refl ectively about how we want to use these new technologies. Not just getting stuck into it and getting caught in the ‘shock of the new’, where we are so absorbed by
24 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Green (
rob.green@
cilip.org.uk) is Editor of Information Professional
the dazzle of the emerging technology, we don’t stop to ask ‘is this useful to us, is it a threat, what are we using it for?’ I’m inter- ested in how technologies like Generative AI are received culturally.” Specifi c Generative AI tools already exist, helping to sift and summarise large texts. Legal fi rms use them, academics and re- searchers use them – and for those familiar with them, they do not hold a mystical quality but are instead viewed as a useful tool, among many.
What is new about ChatGPT, and similar Large Language Model based AIs is that they can now utilise huge computing power, that essentially allows them to learn from a snapshot of the entire internet. Couple this new-found processing power with a chatbot
April-May 2023
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