Thanksgiving dinners are known to be the stage of controversial discussions: religion and politics are amongst the conversation topics that make these family gatherings awkward for some...and dreadful for many.
So, for this decade’s last Thanksgiving, how about switching it up and talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI)?! After all, every company seems to be “doing AI”. You can do your part to help explain it.
Here are some simple, many even silly, steps to get your Thanksgiving meal back on track with AI.
What the heck is AI anyways?!
If it’s a 5-year-old or a 75-year-old that asks today: “What is AI?”, use the following three steps:
1) The ‘academic’ explanation
You could say: "Artificial Intelligence refers to the science that helps computers do things that only humans typically can do. For instance: making a decision as the result of something we learned over time, or, altering our opinion based on new information, deducting the answer to a complex situation based on incomplete data…”.
If this intro works, then you can further theorize how humans have special powers like imagination, judgment or deduction.
OR, you can move to step #2.
2) Pull up a calculator
Many of my fellow technologists will probably cringe at the idea that one could reduce the concept of “AI” to a calculator. But they are suffering from the “Curse of Knowledge”: they know more than most people do and they forget what it feels to “not know”.
To understand AI and the service it provides humans, you’ve got to start with the most basic concept attached to “AI”: the algorithmic sequence. “AI” is the result of algorithms and their sequence. If your audience doesn’t understand that, you won’t get very far.
Now, ask your audience to grab a pen and a paper. Give your human subject a series of complex calculations. Time them. Then, enter the same sequence into the calculator while you ask the human to time you as you're getting the answer. If all goes well, the human will witness that the machine was much faster. They should also understand that a) the machine stores more information than their brain ever could, and that b) it can retrieve the right answer 100% of the time, and faster than they could ever hope. You can probably also explain that the machine never will fail as a result of stress or confusion or emotions that only humans have.
Now you’re ready for step #3.
3) The "Calculator 2.0 Moment": Play Twenty Questions
Twenty questions is a simple game that requires deductive reasoning and creativity. One player secretly thinks of a thing (typically an animal, vegetable, or mineral). The other players try to guess their secret by asking 20 questions.
Spend 5 or 10 mins playing “Twenty Questions” with your little nephew or grandma. Spend enough time playing the game so they can understand what ‘deductive reasoning’ and ‘creativity’ feel like and curse of knowledge.
Now, pull up an Amazon Alexa (or similar smart device). Play “Twenty Questions” with it. This should result in what I call the “Calculator 2.0 Moment”. It’s that moment when humans realize that machines can do things they can.
It’s that moment when they realize that a big part of "our lives run on math”.
And “when things run on math”, they can be decoded, recoded and improved to provide better results, faster.
That’s what Artificial Intelligence is all about.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
