project starter
In this job, humans play the visionary role behind AI-enabled projects.
Like any chatbot, every conversation in ChatGPT starts the same way, with an empty box for text entry. If no initial text is entered, nothing happens.
The reason behind this is that, redundancies aside, complex AI models are just fancy calculators. These are machines designed to receive input, process it (according to a very complex set of equations), and produce an output. If there is no input, there is no output. Nothing is in, nothing is out.
AI models are a means to achieve objectives such as increasing sales, improving efficiency, and improving service, but they do not prioritize which objectives are achieved. They can be used to drive customer success, invent new products, promote equality, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they are wasted if humans don’t start using them in the first place.
Over time, AI models may be fed inputs from other, more complex AI models. For example, a self-driving car might change course on its own after a route guidance AI alerts it to a collision ahead. But even in that case, humans would still choose the AI’s original goal of reaching the destination safely. Humans drive the final cascade.
Moreover, as anyone who has worked in a large organization knows, nothing happens without buy-in. Perhaps the people who need to be convinced of the project’s merits are management, investors, team leaders, or all three. AI cannot buy into a project unless a human programs it to do so. As a result, companies will need humans to act as purposeful project starters.
