New AI, Old Lessons

We’re being told to quickly get with the times and build with New AI, lest we be left completely behind and irrelevant.

But what Im noticing is that those pushing the hardest for the adoption of New AI know the least about the Old Lessons.

We’re being told to quickly get with the times and build with New AI, lest we be left completely behind and irrelevant.

But what I’m noticing is that those pushing the hardest for the adoption of New AI know the least about the Old Lessons.

I’ll never pretend that I can write-up or even summarise the Old Lessons in a LinkedIn post. They are based on the life work of countless individuals and span dozens, if not hundreds, of books.

But just knowing these Old Lessons exist is a massive head start - and puts you ahead of most.

The Old Lessons came from real-world applications built within a particular domain or industry. Many Old Lessons remained industry specific for a long time, though guidelines often emerge to generalise them more broadly. The modern office chair evolved from fighter jets.

Safety critical and automation heavy domains are awash with Old Lessons: aviation, industrial automation, medicine, high-rise construction, etc.

There are many academic domains that underpin Old Lessons. Psychology, cognitive science, human factors, economics, etc.

Sadly, ignorance of Old Lessons is pervasive in the tech industry. There is perhaps no better example of this than the Head of Autopilot Software at Tesla stating complete ignorance of basic human factors and human-computer interaction concepts during a legal deposition.

Not adopting new technology may set you back. Ignoring Old Lessons is guaranteed to do so.