Are you the type of person who believes in magic?
Magic wands, sparkles and bright color gradients. This is how AI is being presented to you. The value pitch follows from this imagery. They tell you AI can do nearly anything and it can probably do it better. If it cannot do it yet, it’s just a matter of time.
And what could be more magic than the miracle of life and human intelligence? AI uses our language, sounds like us and is even given human personalities. It thinks. It spends time reasoning. It even uses emojis.
This is all an illusion. The M in LLM stands for model, not magic.
For AI to work, it needs to be treated like a tool. With awareness of tradeoffs, precaution and knowledge of whether or not it is the right one. There are fantastic use cases. But there are also an countless ways to wreak havoc on your company, product and customers.
I’ve been itemizing these failure modes for years. I’ve now formalized them into a framework.
I invite you to look behind the curtain.