Zeros and Os
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ironies of machines versus people and how they work together or don’t. We’ve got chatbots providing customer service, and Siri and Alexa starting our music, giving us directions, and sending us recipes. ChatGPT just upped the ante big-time, the likes of which we have never seen. A tsunami of change is heading for us; anyone who says it’s glorified search hasn’t a clue what’s around the corner.
We’ve already seen blue-collar work outsourced to machines and labor arbitrage overseas. Those jobs will continue to go, and then white-collar jobs will go at a higher and higher order. Reading radiographs. Writing analyst reports or investment research or marketing copy. That’s just the beginning. I left a recent zoom call with a leader asking me, “How do I create amazing content without smarty-pants analysts and journalists?” He at least wants a smaller contingent. He’ll get his wish and it’s going to happen faster than we think. It’s also going to create a sea change in our labor markets, and where is this labor going to find new jobs or be redeployed?
It’s a fascinating set of questions, because as these technologies democratize data science and coding, anyone can become a computer scientist or data scientist. Then new jobs will shoot up like green sprigs after a forest fire. Do we go through a period of social unrest first? Mass layoffs? So much to think about. And while I’m considering these lofty implications and talking to CTOs from major enterprises about the new labor forces required and new leadership traits that tomorrow’s CTOs and CEOs will need, I’m taken to the reality of sorting zeros and Os. Yes, quite literally.
It seems while the world is changing at warp speed nine, the computers at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) still can’t tell the difference between a zero and an O. Seriously.
They’ve been programmed to not recognize zeros. Imagine the silliness that ensued when my husband tried to register our car, whose license plate has lots of zeros. He went to the computer to do what any person does these days — DIY customer service.
He pushed buttons and completed keystrokes only to be thwarted every time he tried to register the vehicle. Frustrated after too many attempts, he did what no reasonable person wants to do — trekked to the DMV. Luckily it is close by but, unluckily, the lines are long. It’s the DMV after all.
After waiting an hour, the clerk told him that the DMV computers don’t recognize zeros and all he needed to do next time is hit Os when inputting the information. She resolved it in seconds. It took him hours to register the vehicle because the computers are not trained to recognize zeros. Hmmm… I swear one cannot make this stuff up.
As I ponder the prospect of our world changing faster and faster, I reflect on the fact that today’s so-called IT solutions have been programmed by people — to do the dumbest things. I am scared thinking about what it means when these same people start programming the machines and the algorithms that underpin them. It is, frankly, terrifying. And here we thought the problem was ones and zeros. Looks likes zeros and Os to me. Go figure.