Let’s Recap: AI Roundtable Breakfast | by Katie Amison

On Wednesday 9th August, I had the pleasure of travelling down to London for the Artificial Intelligence Roundtable Breakfast, hosted by the lovely Daisy Curless. I love attending any sort of Multiverse event, but particularly the Roundtables as there’s free food! I previously attended a Roundtable event in Birmingham at Marco Pierre-White’s Steakhouse and the food and company were absolutely amazing! I truly recommend attending your nearest Roundtable event as they are a brilliant way to meet new people and build your confidence.

The food I mentioned:

Ahead of each Roundtable, guests are sent a list of prompts, which the facilitators for each table will use to navigate the conversation. The wonderful Lara Montefiori, Senior Director of People’s Diagnostics at Multiverse, led the discussion at my table, and I must say, she certainly kept us on our toes with her thought-provoking questions!

The discussion covered 4 key topics with regard to AI:
1.    Using AI for apprenticeship/career success
2.    Ethical considerations
3.    The future of work         
4.    Human-AI collaboration

Honestly, I think my table had a particularly negative view towards Artificial Intelligence as we dove into a discussion around the exploitation of AI data for some quite terrifying things, such as using health apps in certain countries to monitor abortion/pregnancy, how companies are selling our private data left, right, and centre, and how scary it is that we have created something that is ultimately more intelligent than us.

We also had concerns regarding its ability to enlarge the societal class divide using AI knowledge as leverage over those who do not have access to learning resources. (I would like to add that it was brought to our attention that Google now offers free AI learning courses, as does Multiverse now offer an ‘AI Jumpstart’ course – How fantastic?)

Is it appropriate for those who know how to use ChatGPT to make better use of their working time by having it complete tedious tasks, whilst those who do not are potentially putting more work in, but being paid the exact same?

And what about those who do not know how to make the most of ChatGPT? How do you know that the answers it has given you are correct? We spoke about how the key skill needed to compete in this AI-driven world is communication – the ability to be able to give the proper details, have a thorough understanding of the expected results, and ultimately be confident in explaining your results to others. In other words, you have to ask the right questions, in the right way, to get the right answer, to be able to give a valuable result to any stakeholders. Isn’t it convenient? Because not everybody has access to learning resources and skills to communicate… thus a divide is created.

Something that sprung to mind for me during this conversation was ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,’ because I recently wrote a blog titled ‘Why AI is your Best Friend' and in hindsight it is, but only, as I said, if you know how to use it.

Other tables also brought some brilliant ideas to the room, which were incredibly positive and touched on how it is brilliant for timesaving and can be used for things such as:

• Writing code
• Applying for an apprenticeship/job/university
• Checking definitions
• Structuring articles
• Planning trips
• It can even be your personal trainer.

… and plan your weekly meal prep!

These aspects are very much in line with my previously mentioned AI blog, however… The room also touched on points that might help you better understand my reason for referring to it as your enemy (other than those explained earlier):

• It cannot contextualise, lacks moral reasoning, and is more than likely biased. Therefore, AI should be complimentary and not relied upon
• Someone said they love AI when it can do someone else’s job but not when it can do their own – this was another prominent topic of discussion as we explored how the growth of AI could cause job loss due to the much-favoured automation for which it is known.
• Most importantly… we have zero control over it.

Finally, referring back to our concerns over the lack of access to learning about Artificial Intelligence, we spoke about viable solutions, and honestly, we did not have much! How do you ensure this given that equality of education itself has not yet been reached (in my opinion)? Here I open up the discussion to you. What are your thoughts? Is it possible, and if so, how?
 

Katie Amison is an Advanced Data Fellowship apprentice at Multiverse based in the UK. She's writing for the Apprentice Lens as part of the Blogging Team. Here's more about her:

"Hi, I'm Katie and I am a data analytics degree apprentice at Fujitsu - based in Solihull. I started my role as a 19-year-old female with no technical background and it was terrifying! I love sharing my journey and inspiring others through my writing."

Find our full Artificial Intelligence Guide here.