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Nowadays, everywhere you go in Jamaica, government officials, professionals and business leaders, more so the tech ones, extol the virtue of AI. They say it will make Jamaica and the world a better place.-

Information will instantaneously be at your fingertips, and AI will expand the human mind and lead to greater productivity.

Some of us are old enough to remember when social media came onto the scene, and it was said that it would expand communications. There will be no need for gatekeepers and the elites will no longer be the arbiters of who knows what.

Decades later, we live in a world of misinformation and disinformation. Children are exposed to subject matter which they should never have to encounter during this time in their lives. The veracity of what you read or see has more often than not to be verified, or the reputation of the source has to be evaluated.

People no longer communicate directly with each other; they are now connected to their devices as human connections get further and further away.

A hundred years ago, Jamaica was in the agrarian age.  Sugar cane and crops were the drivers of the economy, and communities were built around that industry, sustaining families. Then came tourism which provided jobs and brought in foreign exchange and totally relied on the human connection. Hospitality was essential. Hotels needed workers of every sort.

Come the next quarter of the twenty-first century, AI, which they say is the next step in human evolution, will be transformative. It will also decimate less developed countries. It will do away with low-skilled jobs, do away with meticulousness, and do away with professional obligations. It will be the equivalent of putting Ramen noodles in the microwave-quick and easy.

Professional organisations are already turning to AI and placing the burden of research and eliciting information on it. 

In journalism, reporters submit copy, and by the third sentence, you know this is AI-generated because the work is beyond this reporter.

Some companies have vaunted reputations; they are known as the gold standard in their fields and so command high fees. The quality of work should be at a higher standard; they shouldn’t turn to AI reflexively as a child would. But more and more we are seeing cases of erroneous work by AI sullying the names of reputable companies because they didn’t verify, they didn’t do the legwork, they were happy to submit a pot-noodle rather than a prepared cooked dinner, yet they charged a banqueting fee.

Both social media and AI should be monitored and regulated. Both these technologies are too powerful and dangerous to be blithely placed in anybody’s hands. Human nature remains too capricious to have it wield this kind of power unchecked.

Take the case of Ernst & Young ( EY), one of the most respected accounting and auditing firms in the world. To take on EY means you are serious and require first-class work. The professionals engaged must know their stuff and bring what the brand is all about to the table. That’s why you have to fork out the big bucks.

Now word comes that EY had to withdraw a study entitled “ Points of Attack: Uncovering Cyber Threats and Fraud in Loyalty Systems”, an AI -generated report riddled with factual errors. GPTZero uncovered hallucinations that marred EY’s work, which saw the report rely on erroneous data to declare that loyalty schemes are susceptible to fraud

EY places the loyalty scheme market at US$ 280 billion.

“Publishing a report online is essentially a form of data injection into the pool of knowledge that is the internet. When the report includes fake information ( either filed citation or false claims) it can ‘poison the well” by misleading future researchers, especially if the report is published by a well-known consulting firm and hosted on a high-traffic website,” said GPTZero.

This was unfortunate, but it is a sign of the times- big money for shoddy AI-generated work by people who say they have “Masters”; indeed are masters of their field.

EY will continue to deliver AI-generated work because, as it claimed last October, AI-related revenue has grown 30 per cent year-on-year.

After the pickle it found itself in was revealed, with even the esteemed Financial Times reporting on the matter, EY withdrew the report  from its website and said it is “ reviewing the circumstances that led to its publication.”  It made it clear this report was not connected to work for any of its clients.

“EY Canada takes the accuracy of all the content we publish seriously, and we have an organisation-wide commitment to the responsible use of AI,” the company wrote in a statement.

But what one says and one does have to match up. Hallucinations continue to cause mayhem, and the danger is yet to be fully addressed. In this EY report, the information that was supposed to be found in what went for footnotes was error-laden and, in some instances, was just not there. 

AI will displace professionalism and a vigorous work ethic. Good work will go out the window because it is quicker and cheaper to put it through AI. Many charlatans, carpetbaggers and hucksters will now proliferate, and the Government will be too slow-moving to keep them in check, thus allowing them to leave a trail of destruction and damage in their wake. If EY can be exposed this way, it isn’t too hard to tell what other companies will be peddling.