A reflection time with Dan Collins About AI

Thank you Dan Collins for your time shared with me in a pleasant conversation about several topics, about AI but also about your life and professional experience.

Dan Collins has a rich personal and professional history, having lived in many countries like Ireland, Canada, France, the United States, and China. He has worked in various fields, especially in telecom, and brings a broad perspective to his insights. With extensive experience in consulting, Dan has helped many companies worldwide, often stepping in when projects were in trouble.

AI: first thoughts

He emphasised the importance of asking “why” to understand the reasons behind actions and improve processes, joking that asking “why” “can sometimes break AI or make you want to rip your hair out.” 

Dan believes that most AI in business is overhyped and not very useful. He says 90% of AI is talk and doesn’t do much except in some areas like medical diagnostics. He thinks AI has significant limits because it can’t understand human feelings and jokes or create new ideas.

Key Insights

AI Hype vs. Reality: AI is hyped as a ground-breaking technology, but its practical relativity to business use is supposedly quite limited. Good evidence for effective use is seen in a field such as medical diagnostics, offering a chance for AI to bring tangible benefits.

Human Nuances Matter:  AI still misses those nuances of human behaviour, such as body language and sarcasm, which are so crucial for good communication and imperative for sound business decisions.

Originality: A major drawback of AI is that it does not possess originality. For it to graduate into being a good business tool in the future, it must rise from just being able to report back information to the employer to produce innovative and creative solutions.

Future of AI in Business: For AI to do anything in the future for businesses, it needs to have some base of understanding and creativity that a human would have. If these two qualities are taken out, artificial intelligence will just become a mediocre task tool rather than the stimulus for major stepping stones.

behavior

Consulting Industry’s Flaws: This is one of the failures of the consultancy industry—for many, it shuns down new ideas because consultancy relies too much on repetitive methods and AI for routine tasks, producing mediocre results and not innovative solutions.

Thank you, Dan Collins , for the talk and reflections about your field, AI, and share your meaningful thoughts.