The digitalization of society
Currently I am occupying a profession in IT-Project management. As jobs like Software Developers only appeared due to digitalization, I believe that we already have a highly digitalized workplace. The profession of project management, however, is way older, maybe as old as civilization itself. So, digitalization changed project management in a way that more project data can be gathered, analyzed and reported, and all of that almost in real time. We don’t use any paper charts any more or massive folders to keep track of all the tasks and details of a project. Collaboration Tools like Jira give an easy overview of open tasks, the work in progress and what has been done already. On top of that I can check in real time if we are still on track on the timeline or if the team needs some help. I can exactly analyze what percentage of time a team spends on actual software development, testing or bug-fixing and can try to create the best available environment for the team to thrive, whatever their work requires at a specific point in time. Ironically, when it comes to the most advanced, agile, self-managed teams of developers, they sometimes prefer going back to pin boards to visualize their progress.
What’s that data worth?
Unfortunately, all these wonderful developments come with multiple risks we need to be aware of. Deep fakes, for example, will have us questioning reality in a society that is fully digitalized, where almost everything we experience comes from virtual worlds. It is already very hard to figure out if a picture or video is real or if the sounds and talking, we hear in podcasts come from real people or AI. In the future, there needs to be an even greater awareness about where we get reliable information from. The risks, however, are not limited to the information we receive but extend to the information we share about ourselves. To protect our data from being taken without us knowing the European Union released the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It follows the principle that everyone should have the right to choose how much data they provide about themselves and to have a choice in how companies can work with the data. For example, it can help to protect the data you supply to a company during an application process. But it also needs to be considered that many websites very thoroughly analyze our interests and preferences to sell them to hundreds of other companies. This is a process that definitely needs to be as transparent as possible.
To me, though, the right of free choice seems to be impaired at some points. Whenever you open a website, you will be asked to accept the cookies. Of course, you have the choice to decline this. However, many times you must un-select hundreds of third parties separately to continue. This takes an unreasonable amount of time which almost always leads to us just accepting all the cookies without even bothering to think about what data we provide to whom. This concept has created a system where we are living in an illusion of free choice while companies use our human characteristics against us. They flood our limited mental capacity and short attention span with a giant amount of information, that pushes us to share our data. Surely, I could take my time to just decline cookies on every website that I visit before being able to browse its contents. But when I am researching certain topics on the Internet just to gather some information or compare different sources there will be dozens of websites that I have to use. And in this case, I simply do neither have the time nor the mental capacity to deal with these massive interruptions while working.
To my understanding this is far from a free choice.
Of course, this is just one example of how unaware we deal with our personal data. There are also quite simple solutions, like using the browser “Qwant”, which drastically reduces the amount of personal data that is spread through the internet. But it should make us think about how the world around us forces us to do things we do not actually want to. Similar effects may occur with the use of social media, one sided news reports, or the use of virtual payments instead of cash. It is up to us to contemplate how we want to share our data and what we are willing to do to protect it, because personal data is on the way to becoming the most valuable resource of the 21st century. In the next part I will dive into the use of AI’s like ChatGPT. But before that I want to ask if you have ever wondered why, you can use this tool for free? It is due to the reason OpenAI is making way more profits of training ChatGPT with all our data than it would from some monthly subscriptions.
The gift of AI
During the last couple of years, I had the opportunity to gain quite a lot of experience with the use of AI and especially ChatGPT. We constantly utilize its benefits at work and for my course “Digital Business” I was part of a research group conducting a study about the aforementioned generative AI. Overall, I concluded that ChatGPT is a great assistant when it comes to giving new ideas as well as building on your thoughts. For example, you can give it some notes of things you want to discuss in your Team and ChatGPT will build a logical agenda for you. If there is an important message you must send or speech you have to prepare, you can simply copy your text into ChatGPT and give the AI specific tasks like checking the grammar or adapting the language to the audience. Basically: The more information you supply to the AI and the more you specify what you want it to do (or not to do!) the better the outcome will be. Meanwhile plenty of articles and videos have appeared, that describe how to get the best results from ChatGPT. Also having ChatGPT optimizing your prompt is a viable option. Although AI can help a lot in project management, it will not soon take over the whole role of the project manager. Reciting its own evaluation, ChatGPT can help in a lot of technical tasks like project planning, quality management and communication. With these competencies, I am not scared that I will lose my job to an AI because when these tasks are taken away from me, I will be able to focus more on other responsibilities like motivating the project members and adapting faster to changes. Also, decision making will probably stay a key responsibility for project managers, as humans still have a better understanding of the complex project environment, also considering the economic or political situation to derive a conclusion.
Self-evaluation
In a digital society, we need to be more protective of our data than ever before. Whenever I think about this topic it makes me realize how often I hand out my personal data carelessly on the internet. For me it was quite interesting to see how the Data Protection Guidelines from the EU create a legal framework which helps the European citizens keep control over their personal data. I am familiar with some of the regulations, however for future endeavors I plan to dive a little deeper into this topic.
Also, rethinking the usage of ChatGPT helped me realize that I might be able to use it for far more tasks during my work already, as it can produce any kind of text, but in different versions also pictures, PowerPoint slides and more. However, I am still convinced that complex challenges like data analysis and decision making will require human expertise. Like the regulations of data protection, the EU recently released some regulations for the development of AI’s that I have yet to study. As this is a constantly evolving topic it will be worth it staying up to date with all the developments.
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