All Things Innovation and FEI are thrilled that you’re with us for the event and what you’re talking about essentially is collective intelligence, marrying human intelligence with artificial intelligence.
“When a lot of people talk about artificial intelligence, they talk about replacing humans with it,” says High. “That’s not what I want to do, and that’s not what’s effective. That’s not what I tell other companies to do. I really encourage folks to use artificial intelligence to increase their throughput. That’s the real magic—increasing the throughput. I once told somebody that if I want an AI to do what a human can do, I’ll just go get a human. But if I want to do something that humans can’t do, or if I want to go and make sure that humans are safe, then I can use robots and AIs and drones and things like that—to do the work that keeps people safe and increases their productivity.”
He continues, “There’s a big scare about generative AI coming out right now. And it shouldn’t be. It should be, hey, we can really move fast now. We can get a lot done quickly. A lot of the work that was really kind of what we called grunt work—I used to be a marine, so I know about grunt work—that doesn’t have to be done by us anymore. That can be done by the AI, and we can move much faster and do a whole lot more.”
You will be bringing examples of your work to FEI, and show attendees are going to have to see to understand what we’re talking about but there is plenty going on with AI right on your desk.
“Absolutely,” says High. “Now I don’t have to know everything. As I get older, this is a big deal to me because, I don’t have to be able to think about everything and know everything and learn everything. I’ve got four AI’s that helped me do my work. The AI’s make it so that I can move extremely fast. Recently, people have been saying, Don just does some unbelievable stuff. It’s just because I use the power that I have with me. Of course, there’s much responsibility that comes with much power. But I use the power that I have with me to help build things very quickly and get stuff done for a lot of different people. I can condense eighty-five hours worth of work down to eight hours of work—or even less than that. I’ve been able to really get a ton of work done and move a lot through for a lot of different companies and organizations.”
Attend FEI 2024
Looking forward to FEI 2024? The conference, which will be held June 10 to 12, will feature a session called “Innovation Means Increasing Throughput Not Reducing FTE,” presented by Donald High, Chief Data Scientist, Internal Revenue Service. Strategy, transformation and data science leaders know that the value from automation and/or AI is not provided through the reduction of talent. The value of automation and AI is provided by on-the-ground experts disseminating their tacit human knowledge so a new process can be put in place around new technology. That process, coupled with a strategy and a plan, provides the pathway for enterprise value in the form of collective (human and machine) intelligence. Register for FEI 2024 here.
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