The transforming potential of the AI ​​is right in what we do not see

In 2017, while imparting an Aerospace Engineering course, Catherine Garland realized that their students did not know where they had kept their projects. Moreover, he realized that they didn’t even understand the question. He commented with his teammates and together they discovered that the problem was Much more widespread What they could imagine.

“The concept of files of files and directories, essential for the understanding of computers by previous generations, was a gallimatism for modern students,” They explained. The students did not feel the need to organize anything, because they were enough to know the name of the file so that Windows Search either Spotlighth in macOS Locate the document they wanted to access.

At that time we did not realize, but that small generational change is key to understanding that the impact of ‘Deep Research’ type tools goes far beyond intellectual work.

The great disorder

Many years before all this, in a huge Las Vegas warehouse some operators tried to organize 1,500,000 boxes of shoes. Zappos technicians, which for years have been A reference of the Internet sale in the USThey experienced with several taxonomies and organizational systems, but none of them managed to satisfy them completely.

Every day, “new shoes arrived and old shoes came out, the stations changed and with them the styles. When a supplier created a new line, you did not simply move everything down to make room next to the previous line. When a line was interrupted There was no way to recover everything to fill that space. ” They discovered that the only way to adapt To the market movements efficiently was to reorganize the warehouse every time there was one. And, of course, that was unsustainable.

What they did was exactly the same as Garland’s students, randomly place their shoe boxes and use a database to determine where each aja was in case of needing: a chaotic warehouse and a search engine.

As Chris Anderson said in his system analysis“random access (which) works best for bits in disc units, is also excellent for atoms in warehouses.” And this has implications.

If we take into account that Now we create more data than ever And that, in modern economies, knowledge is the “main necessary input” for production, the really interesting question is why we do not hug the great disorder.

Where is the knowledge?

The problem, as Luis Garicano explained A few months ago, “that knowledge (key in productive systems) is rooted in individuals who have limited time to work.” Although nobody often realized it, the big question we have asked ourselves again and again For more than 200 years it is: “How do we organize to better use that knowledge?”

And, for these purposes, when we talk about knowledge we do not talk about anything theoretical; We refer to “the ability to solve the problems that arise naturally in any process”, of know-how, knowing how to do things. It doesn’t matter if it is a doctor in the face of a disease, a plumber in the face of a leak or an administrative in front of a form.

So far we have solved it based on dividing the work, creating economies of scale and building stable production chains. That is: based on forming Hyperspecialists in specific processesto allow them to work as much as possible in their field of experience and to ensure that there is a structured (and simple) way that these processes are gathered with each other.

If we think of abstract, it is a system very similar to that of folders and directories. If we think about the productive social structure of humanity as a huge machine to process information, transmit it and distribute it, we realize that everything is involved in boxes. Its structure is based on knowledge hierarchies (Engineers above operators), on access routes (long productive chains to move goods, services or people between departments), directories (platforms and logistics networks) and well -segmented transformation processes.

When the model does not give more of itself

In this way, a production chain is not only a succession of machines, companies and processes: it is a way to structure knowledge, that each person knows what they have to know at the time and the place that is needed to manufacture any product. That is A very good idea And with enormous potential: it is enough to see the productivity boom that lived in the last century.

The problem is that, as in the shoes warehouse, it also has problems. Each new process, each technological innovation, each productive sector that ceases to be useful … Add complexity to the management of that thick knowledge tree which is the globalized society.

The intuition that “great disorder” could make a lot of sense in the current context is on the table for years. The great “but” has always been that, to the extent that knowledge adhered to individuals, we could not extract it, process it and organize it as Zappos did. Or, rather, we couldn’t.

And then the AI ​​arrived

And, before her, the digitalization of knowledge and monitoring of the work of tens of millions of people. With all those data under your arm, New artificial intelligence functionalities “They suppose a shot to the flotation line of much of the current intellectual work.”

And, as I said Our partner Javier LacortBeyond the incremental improvements, we talk about systems that “can navigate the web, analyze multiple sources, synthesize information and produce detailed reports on a matter. And with a level of sophistication that is dangerously approaching the work of many human analysts. In any field. “

In the end, we see an analogous process that occurred with the search engines. Where we used to need an encyclopedia and a series of “physical” bridges to get to knowledge (editorials, distributors, etc.) suddenly there was only one search box. This relational change with the knowledge that opened us to “great disorder” takes one step with the AI. We are no longer talking about locating the shoe box, we talk about systems capable of processing the entire order: it is not only to look for data, it is to integrate it and make it accessible. That is the “googlification of society.”

The point is that if we stay here, we will be staying halfway.

Because if we think about its impact by applying it to an almost infinite succession of tasks and jobs, we are most likely to conclude that Productivity increases cannot be very large. But what we really talk about is that if the structure is changed in which We organize socio-productive knowledgechange (as a consequence) the entire social structure; Change the way in which we organize economically, socially.

Image | Adrian Sulyok

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