Daveslist Volume 3 Issue 22 🤖
In which I add to the cacophony of noise about 'AI' by asking everyone to basically just calm down a bit.
Ahoy there!
I haven’t really found my blogging groove again in 2024. Partly this is due to busy-ness, and partly due to just getting out of the habit.
In recent week’s I’ve been able to put some words down though - there was the post about the whole ‘Local GDS’ thing that I newslettered to you all last time, and today I’ve produce the missive below.
What’s more, as a result of the work I am doing, I have loads of stuff that I could blog about. It feels like every project I do improves my practice, and the results get closer and closer to being the ‘right’ thing. Sharing that process is important and I need to find a way to take the time out to extract the learning from the work outputs and share them.
I’ll work on it!
Anyway, onto the newsletter proper.
Countering the AI hype
Summary: all this tech called 'AI' is genuinely exciting. But the impact of it is unlikely to be felt for several years. Don't expect quick results, and don't expect them to come without a hell of a lot of hard, boring work first.
It's hard to look at LinkedIn these days without being instantly confronted by AI enthusiasts, almost foaming at the mouth as they share their vision for how the public sector can save millions, if not billions, of pounds by simply using AI.
It sounds so easy! As a chief executive I would be reading this stuff and thinking to myself, 'why the hell aren't my people doing this already?'.
In fact, I am hearing from digital and technology practitioners in councils all over the country saying that this is happening. That the AI hype is putting pressure on teams to start delivering on some of these promises, and to do so quickly. I find this troubling.
It's always worth referring to my 5 statements of the bleedin' obvious when it comes to technology in organisations:
If something sounds like a silver bullet, it probably isn’t one
You can’t build new things on shaky, or non-existent, foundations
There are no short cuts through taking the time to properly learn, understand and plan
There’s no such thing as a free lunch – investment is always necessary at some point and it’s always best to spend sooner, thoughtfully, rather than later, in a panic
Don’t go big early in terms of your expectations: start small, learn what works and scale up from that
How does this apply to using AI in public services? Here's my take on the whole thing. Feel free to share it with people in your organisation, especially if you think they may have been spending a little too long at the Kool Aid tap:
The various technologies referred to as 'AI' have huge potential, but nobody really understand what that looks like right now
Almost all the actual, working use cases at the moment are neat productivity hacks, that make life mostly easier but don't deliver substantial change or indeed benefits
Before we can come close to understanding how these technologies can be used at scale, we need to experiment and innovate in small, controlled trials and learn from what works and what doesn't
Taking the use of these technologies outside of handy productivity hacks and into the genuinely transformative change arena will involve a hell of a lot of housekeeping to be done first:
accessing and cleaning up data, being a big one.
Ensuring other sources for the technology to learn from is of sufficient quality (such as web page content, etc) is another.
Bringing enough people up to the level of confidence and capability needed to execute this work at scale, for three - and there's a lot more.
The environmental impact of these technologies is huge, and many organisations going ham on AI also happen to have declared climate emergencies! How is that square being circled? (Spoiler - it isn't.)
The choice of AI technology partner is incredibly important and significant market testing will be required before operating at scale. There's an easy option on the market that is picking up a lot of traction right now, because it's just there. This is not a good reason to use a certain technology provider. Organisations must be very wary of becoming addicted to a service that could see prices rocket overnight. More importantly perhaps is whether you can trust a supplier, or those that supply bits of tech to them, to always do the right thing with your data. There's always going to be an element of risk here: but at least identify it, and manage it.
Lastly, the quality of the outputs of these things cannot be taken on trust, and have to be checked for bias, inaccuracies and general standards. Organisations need to have an approach to ensuring checks and balances are in place, otherwise all manner of risks come into play, from the embarrassing to the potentially life-threatening.
This ended up being a lot longer than I first imagined. But I guess that just shows that this is a complex topics with a whole host of things that need to be considered.
Just remember - any messages you see claiming that AI is a technology that takes hard work away for minimal investment or effort, is at best just guesswork and at worst an outright lie.
This issue’s links
Here’s the recording from last week’s LocalGovDigital Live! discussion about structural reform in local government. Book onto future events so you don’t miss out!
This explainer video about ‘community power’ from NewLocal is pretty interesting
“Should you have a button on your website that says ‘translate’?” - very interesting take by James at Essex County Council’s Service Transformation team.
I absolutely love this - a Chrome browser extension that lets you play Breakout against your Google Calendar - bash the ball into the appointments to destroy them! There’s even an option to automatically decline the meetings you destroy! 😂 Tempting….
That’s it for this issue. Don’t forget to hit reply if you have any feedback, or forward this on to anyone you think may enjoy it.
Also, if I can help you with anything, you can hire me!
Until next time,
Dave ❤️
Great piece and enjoyed the real vs fantasy AI comments too! Thanks - assume will be on Linked in soon too?