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Assistants in the Age of AI

When I started working for a living, there were secretaries in many organizations. These were people who actually did a lot of correspondence (written or verbal) and busy work for managers or executives. Over time, as email and computers became commonplace on desks, I saw fewer of these positions. As more people started to send email, we had to actually alter software to allow assistants to impersonate their bosses and manage the volume of communications that many of us deal with.

We're in a new age of assistants with the emergence of Generative AIs powered by LLMs that can appear to respond in a conversational style to requests and perform actions on our behalf. In this new era, will AIs function as old-style secretaries, handling simple, but important tasks? Are they the trusted helpers that secretaries used to be for many executives? Are we all going to have an assistant, and do we want one, or need one?

There was a post on the role of AIs in this new world, and their ability to not only be a cheap, reliable assistant for many of us, but also a powerful tool for those that still have personal assistants helping them manage their workload. However, it's not a tool that takes the place of a secretary, for many reasons mentioned in the post. It's just a tool that can help manage some work, but isn't really intelligent, empathetic, or able to discern subtleties that come from the context of the humans involved in a situation.

In many ways, that's what I see for Copilot-like AIs used by technical people. They are assistants, and they can help with tasks, but with general, tedious, common tasks. They are a better search engine, and they can handle small tasks, but they aren't replacing talented people, and they certainly don't always understand enough of the context of a particular situation. If a general or common solution works, AIs are good, but in terms of being efficient and optimal when solving subtle, complex problems, we still need a human to guide the AI and assess whether the response is appropriate.

I am both enamored by AI, but also very skeptical that the technology will do more than provide faster searching for information and light guidance of options. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but I think that continuing to improve your own judgment while learning through experience will ensure that you not only are more valuable than an AI, but that you can use one effectively as a tool. A useful assistant, but one that you know to overrule when appropriate.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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