Generative artificial intelligence (AI) might not be quite ready to replace human workers on a large scale, given its proclivity for errors or even fabrications. But the technology can serve as a handy digital assistant, if you can just figure out where it makes sense, notes a recent article from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
John Horton, an MIT Sloan associate professor who specializes in AI labor and online marketplace research, says the challenge is not with the technology, but with how humans interact with the technology. For example, how do you ask a question or make a request that gets the results you want?
“When we are thinking about ‘Should AI do a task?’ it’s not really a question of ‘Could an AI do a task?’” Horton said. “It’s whether the process of combining AI with human capabilities is worth the effort.”
With that in mind, Horton offered four questions that can help you decide whether to give a task to an AI chatbot:
- How much time does the task require without AI assistance?
- How highly paid are the people who perform this task?
- How capable is the AI of completing the task correctly?
- How easy is it for humans to determine whether the AI output is accurate?