This made me chuckle but, there is an important lesson to learn. A while ago now a close old school friend of my daughter had the human job of manually typing out the Sky News Ticker so this resonated with us when we discussed it at he weekend.
Sky News recently found itself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, thanks to a glaring ticker blunder. In a moment of sheer confusion, the ticker wrongly announced that due to the recent electricity outage the Special Air Service (SAS) were cancelling their 12 planned flights to Heathrow. They even flashed up a “Who Dares Wins” SAS badge, leaving viewers bewildered. The 12 flights were of course from Scandinavian Airlines. The error was swiftly corrected, but not before setting social media abuzz with chatter and speculation. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the essential need for impeccable accuracy in news reporting and the lightning-fast spread of misinformation in today’s digital era.
Was it an AI blunder or was it human error? Who knows….
AI can be successfully deployed to automate certain repetitive tasks but be very careful when choosing which tasks and be sure that there is the requisite oversite. AI is a helper that frees up capacity. It definitely shouldn’t be operating autonomously.
AI has a problem with context which was highlighted by this blunder. This issue is well described by Dr Anthony Kenneson-Adams DBA. FIoL. from Project7 Consultancy in a recent article “When AI Cannot Help: Lessons for Manufacturing Leader” in Project7’s Linkedin newsletter “The Performance Equation”. Dr Anthony Kenneson-Adams says “AI excels at pattern recognition but struggles with context. In a dynamic manufacturing environment, understanding the broader context is critical. For example, AI might flag a production slowdown and suggest a machine adjustment, but it may not recognize that the delay is due to a shortage of skilled operators or an unexpected supplier issue”.
One key lesson here is that the inappropriate or blanket adoption of AI to automate work and cut costs may result in reputational damage and even more failure demand to sort out.
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