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.

2024/04/01: A little early for this, no?

April Fool's Day came early this year:

"NYC’s government chatbot is lying about city laws and regulations" (Ars Technica)

2024/04/02: new Complex Machinery: GM's tattletale cars

Saturday's Complex Machinery explored that issue with GM's tattletale connected cars.

As it turns out, that incident sheds light on three different data-related risks.

"When your car talks to everyone but you"

2024/04/03: Making a note …

Saving this one here so I can refer to it in the future:

Whenever you're about to say "We're going to deploy an AI chatbot for customer service" …

… say this instead: "we're going to deploy a defective, unhinged alternative to a search system. And we shall be held liable for its errors."

I'm not saying that AI is bad. I work in this field and I can assure you that AI – not just the newly-popular genAI, but all of ML/AI – has valid use cases and can bring real business value.

The thing is, "AI chatbot for customer service" is not that use case. At least not today. Maybe someday it'll be useful. But it's folly to keep deploying AI chatbots now when they clearly aren't ready for prime time.

If you really want to use AI, look for valid use cases specific to your business need. You'll be much happier.

(And if you need help with that in your company, reach out: https://qethanm.cc/contact/ )