INTERVIEW Archive
Cutting through the hype – will AI deliver in the workplace?
We look back to April and Mark Carrigan, researcher in Digital Education at the University of Manchester, talks about how 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, concerns and 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 changing how we work and live, but creating something fundamentally different. It is easy to be seduced by the hype surrounding Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard alter- native, but University 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 professions 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 Univer- sity of Manchester, says: “I’m interested in how we develop a purposeful, deliberate relationship with new technologies – how do we do that socially and organi- sationally?
“Rather than leave adaptation to individuals experimenting, I want to know how organisations like universities can support the generation of cultures that enable us to talk reflectively 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 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 interested in how technologies like Generative AI are received culturally.” Specific Generative AI tools already exist, helping to sift and summarise large texts. Legal firms use them,
December 2023
Mark Carrigan is a researcher in Digital education at University of Manchester.
academics and researchers 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. IP
This article first appeared in the April/May 2023 issue of Informa- tion Professional. Read the full version at:
https://tinyurl.com/35j46zd6. INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL 33
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