What Is the Biggest Myth About AI?

When some communication tools offer to use AI to compose responses, it can make you cringe. Not because the responses aren’t good, but because it seems to imply that the hard part of communication is just generating words. Lineate CEO, Ben Engber, explains why this matters.

"I think part of the early hype around AI is that it does such a passable job of reproducing the reams of corporate communication that goes round an organization. It makes it look like it’s doing someone’s job just like a human does," Ben says.

He notes that while AI can handle the mechanics of communication, it also raises a broader question: when we talk about the cost reduction possibilities that this unleashes, it prompts us to consider what those communications were really achieving in the first place. How many of those words were truly necessary and actually increasing knowledge?

Perhaps generative AI can be an easy first step in streamlining organizational processes. You could replace a bunch of the existing communication with AI, and then start looking at what remains.

Ben adds, "Once we have AIs talking to AIs, maybe it will be easier to see what happens when we eliminate this channel entirely. Analyzing human communication networks is notoriously difficult — perhaps generative AI offers a new path to streamlining it?"