While there are a few different things that the term “artificial intelligence” can refer to, in this post we’re focusing on the kind that so many organizations are pushing their employees to use.

I’m going to do it.

I’m going to say those two words…or two letters. You know the ones I mean. The ones that everyone is sick of hearing about right now.

Artificial intelligence. A.I.

Did you roll your eyes a bit? I feel you. If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard more than enough about it from LinkedIn bros, social media influencers, news anchors, and vibe coders. Your CEO thinks that they have to incorporate it into all your workflows so the company can stay in competition with everyone else. LinkedIn bros need something new to talk about. News anchors regularly give conflicting information and generally have no idea how it works. Vibe coders understand how it works but don’t care.

And then there’s me. Social media influencer (nah, not really). Why am I bringing up AI when I’m so ambivalent about it? Well, it’s because I’m so ambivalent about it. Plus, I’m a researcher so that means I go down every rabbit hole I can find - especially when someone’s paying me to - so I can translate for those of you who have just enough time to read this, but not enough time to do the research and parse the data yourself. Just your friendly, neighborhood anthropologist here doing my good deed for the day.

Just to let you know, this is only one part of an ongoing series. Bite-size for your brain digesting pleasure. While there are a few different things that the term “artificial intelligence” can refer to, right now let’s focus on the kind that so many organizations are trying to integrate. During the rest of this post, whenever I mention “AI”, that’s the one I’m referring to.

AI is built with basic rules in place that it is supposed to obey. Remember Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics from I, Robot? For non-scifi nerds, in I, Robot there are three laws that are inherent to robots’ programming and they cannot deviate from. First, to not harm humans through either action or inaction. Second, to obey all orders given to it by a human except when it conflicts with the First Law. Third, it must protect it’s own existence provided that doesn’t conflict with the prior Laws.

Why is this important for you to know? AI is built, first and foremost, to give you an answer to any question you ask, something like the Second Law. It cannot deviate from this. If you ask AI a question, it must give you an answer. Here’s the catch-

The answer doesn’t have to be correct.

You read that right. It’s job is to give you an answer, not necessarily a correct answer. So, why would AI answer your question incorrectly? Because it’s inherent programming that it cannot deviate from dictates that you receive an answer to your query even when the information necessary isn’t available to the AI you’re using.

Which leads to the next, trickier, question: Why doesn’t AI have all the information at it’s fingertips, so to speak? Google does. Ah, but therein lies the fundamental difference. AI are programs developed by companies to formulate answers to questions based on statistical probability using information that it has been “trained” on.

Google is completely different. Google is a system that indexes webpages that are published on the internet. Basically, it works by pulling up webpages, etc. whose keywords roughly match what you’ve typed in the search bar. Then it’s up to you to decide which sources are legit and truthful, to the best of your ability.

Because AI formulates answers based on data that it has been fed, it cannot give you information that it doesn’t have. It’s widely known that AI organizations are being sued for intellectual property, copyright, and trademark infringement because the programs are being fed art, books, and other things that require purchase in order to use. However, these companies acknowledge that if they had to pay authors, artists, and everyone who’s work they need to use in order for the AI to work they wouldn’t make any money.

And there, folks, is the answer to your question. Why does AI give you wrong answers? Why is it “hallucinating” law cases that don’t exist when asked to support a lawyer’s case? Why does it XXXXX? Because it’s fundamental Law is to give you an answer, no matter what that answer is. Organizations make money from repeat customers and those who develop AI are no different. If you were to receive a response that indicated the program didn’t have the information it needed in order to answer your query then what are the chances that you’d use it repeatedly? None.

Does this mean that they’re useless? No, of course not, and I’ll be diving deeper into that later. But what is does mean is that each of us has to use common sense. We can’t depend on a computer program to give us the answers we need, whether that’s to create a speech, do coding, perform research (oh, please don’t do this!), or anything else completely on its own.

Here are the key takeaways:

  1. AI are programs that are developed specifically to give you an answer to your question, even if the answer is incorrect. It is not programmed to tell you “no”.
  2. AI can only give you answers based on information that has been fed into it. If it’s fed like a toddler, then it’ll give you a toddler’s information. If it happens to have been fed the information that you need - great! But it’ll present the info based on the statistical probability of the information having been used the most in the past, not based on reliability or recent discoveries - which is why they cannot be used to complete research.

So can AI be reliably used for anything? I’m glad you asked - yes! And I can’t wait to tell you about it…

…next time.

Until then, this is your friendly, neighborhood anthropologist. Stay critical, my friends.