AI is not a magic wand and it won’t fix your problems
Without investment in people, processes, and working conditions, AI becomes merely "a technological smoke screen for deeper institutional decline."
From the AI is a tool for people and not a replacement for them dept:
“AI is often framed as a tool for efficiency, but efficiency alone does not strengthen public systems without the underlying capacity being improved. Even when tasks are completed faster, the deeper constraints of the system do not automatically disappear. In many cases, AI ends up addressing the symptoms of these problems rather than their causes.”
If an institution — or an industry — is declining, adding AI won’t magically make it better. In the cases that these Cornell researchers highlight in this piece, there were only meaningful improvements when the underlying systems were working well and the human infrastructure around the software was well-developed.
Even beyond the lack of support for some regional needs (languages, dialects, accents) that created issues here, these systems worked best when the software was designed to support existing well-functioning human systems. If the human systems don’t work, if there isn’t human support, or if people are expected to adapt their processes to the needs of the software, the projects weren’t successful.
It isn’t a magic wand. There are important lessons here for news and other declining industries: adding software doesn’t absolve you of figuring out your underlying problems, and it will not solve them for you. It might even paper over them and make them worse.
It’s just another tool. Invest in your people.
