Human Services and the AI era – post 1
‘We are on the verge of the most profound industrial revolution in human civilization’ Zack Kass – Head of GTM at OpenAI
Depending on your worldview on the topic of AI the last 10 days or so and the fall and rise of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has either left you in a bit of a head-spin or has had no impact, and for me this is the knub of the problem at the moment with AI.
From conversations with friends and colleagues, people are either really into AI, or to be more accurate Large Language Models (LLM’s) like ChatGPT or they’re not, and from my conversations many in the human services sector are towards the latter. Guess this is not that surprising given the overarching title of the sector being ‘human’ services.
However, my personal view is that we need people from a wide range of sectors and backgrounds to engage in the conversation as if not already, the rapid pace of change around AI developments will impact everyone’s life and work very shortly in potentially profound ways.
Overall, I would describe myself as a ‘techno-optimist’ however the ongoing harm I believe social media is having should be warning enough that we need more voices in the conversation than we did as that began to emerge.
I am increasingly using ChatGPT (other LLM’s are widely available too!) for a range of activities from proof reading this post, to brainstorming ideas about how I might offer better support into the human services sector, to how we might use to supercharge and personalise L&D. I’ve even recently created my own GPT to use with people I facilitate learning on The Myriad of Leadership Conversations.
The opportunities are limitless and that can lead to inaction but I will return to what the opportunities and also the threats might be for those working in the Human Services sector in relation to AI over the next few weeks, and am keen to hear about both sides of the argument from others who are exploring this topic.
