“Ironically, we seem to need a personal technology – a personal AI assistant to make the digital society more humane.”
The most sought-after occupation now and in the foreseeable future, is the design of prompts for large language models (LLM) like ChatGPT. This profession may already yield a substantial salary of $300 000 per year and is expected to continue to do so in the future.
To excel in this role, one must be able to pose questions to the machine learning model in a manner that utilises its logic to the fullest extent. This involves engaging in communication with computers and machines in a more natural way than in programming languages, rather in the manner of person-to-person interaction.
However, the language of the prompts and the associated skills are yet relatively limited, although expected to develop rapidly. We are currently shaping this language through our daily interactions, such as conversing with ChatGPT or simpler forms of artificial intelligence.
Tiger Leap with fairy dust
The opportunity to bring the skills of using this emerging language is not too different from the ways that general IT skills were brought to masses in Estonia through the Tiger Leap initiative a quarter of a century ago. The key distinction, however, lies in the fact that a significantly larger number of people will now be querying the LLMs, compared to the number of people who started programming at the end of last century. This is because LLMs are adaptive learning systems that will be usable by people with broadly variable set of skills. What we should think about is elevating the basic level of those skills. It’s useful, because in terms of impact, harnessing artificial intelligence is like having a cooperative agreement with a myriad of magical creatures as compared to just one-leap tiger.
While the substantial salaries mentioned above may seem somewhat inflated, it does reflect reasonable expectations regarding the possibilities offered by LLMs. Early acquisition of relevant skills translates to a workforce operating at a high level, fostering innovation in products, services, business solutions, and so on.
Mitigating the drawbacks of artificial intelligence
In order to cultivate the skill of communicating with AI, the most valuable investment for a country would be to provide a personal AI assistant to every citizen. Each citizen could tailor this assistant to their specific needs in order to:
- facilitate interactions with other artificial intelligences in public or private sector;
- negotiate and monitor various agreements with them, and;
- address the risks associated with widespread implementation of artificial intelligence solutions, such as privacy breaches, bias, external control, and security concerns.
Artificial intelligence as a human right
This vision entails a world where artificial intelligence is accessible not only to large organisations but also to individuals, supporting their livelihoods according to their own preferences. Tongue in cheek, we can consider this a preventive measure to artificial intellectual disability on individual and societal level. Having a personal AI assistant could be deemed a fundamental right in Estonia, potentially on par with access to the internet. This stands in stark contrast to Estonia's current Kratt strategy, which primarily aims to replace human public servants with AI machines. A personal AI assistant could be Estonia's next big thing, propelling it to the global stage as a pioneer of the digital society, embracing the 21st century.
Embracing natural choices
It was only natural – a choice of an era - that Estonia became a digitised society in the previous century. The Estonian are not a particularly technological nation. But when implementing more and more complex technologies to make our lives more comfortable, safe and fulfilling, it is also reasonable to give the citizen the tools to understand and make the best use of those technologies. In a parallel universe, AI and the digital society would remain incomprehensible phenomena to us as individuals, towards which we feel either indifference, resignation or mistrust.
Ironically, we seem to need a personal technology – a personal AI assistant to make the digital society more humane. In a darker scenario, it may turn into a nagging companion, trying to nudge us towards effectively “best” life choices. It’s possible for us to steer towards a better case, where the personal assistant becomes a powerful tool to really empower us first of all as individuals in the digital society.