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RicardoParticipant
I bust BS from a different lens. I’m big on the scientific concept of falsifiability. What this means is actively trying to disprove everything, and then only tentatively accepting for further investigation those things that cannot be disproven. A structured analytic technique called Analysis of Competing Hypothesis (ACH) is great for this. In practical terms, this means whenever someone asks me a question such as “find out where the weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq” or “find me where the opportunity is in the FinTech market” we need to unpack that and see what evidence actually supports weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq or that there is an opportunity in the FinTech market AND that it is more desirable than other markets in terms of market potential and market challenge to become a leading player in that market.
What upsets me the most about my industry are players peddling poison by using AI as a buzzword to sell something that either A) Fundamentally doesn’t work. OR B) Has not been proven to lead to better results over baseline human intuition.
In many circles, AI has devolved into rebranded statistics or is used in a way not supported by the technology. ChatGPT is the most well-known in popular discourse and in my strategic planning projects with kindreds, I’ve had to flag many cases of ChatGPT being used in a way that detracts rather than adds from a strategic assessment. Such as using ChatGPT as a calculator or asking ChatGPT to rank in priority order the factors that influence buyer behavior.
It is not just small to midmarket companies struggling with this. A law firm got caught using ChatGPT to citations that did not exist. Zillow applied a model that bought houses at prices unwarranted and lost almost 1 billion dollars. Walmart had issues where AI for hyper personalized recommendations led to recommendations to offensive/hateful products. AI-curated newsfeeds used to replace journalists have been caught creating fake news articles or offensive polls suggesting that a murder case was fake or actually a suicide.
I think many times the rush to apply “AI” onto a product or service is driven by a desire to cut corners or a get rich quick scheme honestly.
I will conclude this post by reaffirming that I am by no means anti-technology or anti-AI. On the contrary, this week I am submitting a proposal to speak at a ’24 conference on how I’m using predictive AI into models designed to predict how a competitive landscape could evolve over time for strategic planning decisions. My upset is related to industry players peddling harmful applications that can destabilize entire companies, and entire industries.
RicardoParticipantIt’s funny how one person’s hell can be another’s heaven. Analyzing abstract data through the lens of systems thinking to explain the behavior of the social ecosystem and how it will evolve over time massages my brain in ways that nothing else can. I can feel the electricity firing inside my brain like a euphoric massage. I’d happily barricade myself for days around 6 monitors to articulate a method of measuring the world and explaining its evolution. A competent analyst has over 110 techniques at their disposal to decompose all kinds of phenomena, but the differentiator is being able to do it in a way that is reproducible and explainable to general audiences so that we can engage entities with strategic dialogue about the most pressing decisions facing their business and how our proposed analysis will lead to a better outcome. The difference I’m meant to help people make is to fundamentally reinvent how analytical insights are generated and scaled across their organization to co-create the industry’s future.
Yesterday from 6am to 8pm I created a model that explains the evolution of a certain market in 70 countries by scoring hundreds of variables such as market sizes, growth rates, the regulatory climate, the level of mobile connectivity in a given country, how people spend their time, etc. into a 1-page presentation guiding an emerging brand on how to allocate resources across those 70 countries for best performance and I don’t regret a second of it.
RicardoParticipantI have a confidence flaw that exists in my mind that I haven’t been able to shake despite my expertise and contributions to my field of study being recognized in their own right by entities like the US Department of Labor and executives from Fortune 500 firms. It relates to “brand names” and “pedigree”. One of the reason Big 4 consulting firms like McKinsey say that they can charge a premium to their clients is because they hire grads from Harvard, Yale, etc. and some consider “brand name” and “pedigree” to be a proxy for quality even though the research in this area is very dubious. I fundamentally help companies predict and proact to the future competitive environment. The research in forecasting accuracy by scientists such as Philip Tetlock show that there is no correlation between brand name/pedigree and a person’s forecasting accuracy. Technique and cognitive thinking style are the only traits correlated with accurately making predictions about the future.
I didn’t go to a McKinsey or Gartner even though I had the opportunity to do that, and it is usually in the back of my mind when speaking to a kindred, “does this person think less of my expertise or service because I’m not associated with the McKinseys and the Harvards of the world?” Recently I audited the work of a Big 4 consulting firm for a kindred and they actually liked my work better, but this hasn’t erased this thought from my mind.
I’m curious to learn how other bar flies here have felt or thought through how they’ve positioned themselves against the “brand names” in their market and how they confidently navigate through this noise.
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