What you see here is the last week's worth of links and quips I have shared on LinkedIn, from Monday through Sunday.

For now I'll post the notes as they appeared on LinkedIn, including hashtags and sentence fragments. Over time I might expand on these thoughts as they land here on my blog.

2023/12/19: A data privacy explainer

My fellow data professionals (and data privacy fans),

If you're having trouble explaining to friends and family how companies collect, swap, and analyze personal data, you can send them this video. Plain language that gets to the point:

"Why Even Your Local Grocery Store Wants Your Digital Data" (CNBC)

2023/12/20: Not completely AI-powered

I'm not surprised when I hear how often people are involved in so-called "AI-powered" activities. It's rare that we can trust a machine to handle a process, end-to-end, without any human intervention or oversight.

What surprises me is how often companies sell you on something being "AI-powered" and trying to pretend that there's minimal or no human element.

(I get it: saying that a solution "makes people more efficient" or "splits the work with people" doesn't get quite the same attention as "it's all AI!!" … but still …)

"AI-Powered Drive-Thru Is Actually Run Almost Entirely By Humans" (Bloomberg)

2023/12/21: Sending the right signals

A couple of weeks ago I shared a video on how people and machines work together in the same warehouse environment. Here's a way the two can share the road:

"Turquoise taillights tell you this Mercedes is driving autonomously" (Ars Technica)

Vehicles already bear brake lights and turn signals, "student driver" signs, and the occasional warning for "wide load" or "makes frequent stops." We can spot those from afar and modify our behavior accordingly. It makes perfect sense, then, for a car to signal to nearby drivers and pedestrians that it is under AI control.

Companies can borrow the Mercedes idea for other situations. If a task can be performed by both a person and a machine – whether it's for a customer service chat interface, dispute resolution, or loan approval – customers and team members should know when they are interacting with an automated system.