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Trust is a Funny Thing

I caught an article on AI skepticism and there was a point in the article where trust was mentioned. Specifically the reasons that people distrust an AI or tech tool is that it makes a mistake, so they stop using it. A few examples of this were using a writing AI that made a grammar mistake or a GPS routing device that added a wrong detour. In those cases the humans stopped using the assistance of the algorithm because they felt it wasn't trustworthy.

What's fascinating to me is that I had this same conversation with a human the day before. Someone mentioned they were working with a group and they misstated something. After that, the group stopped listening to all this person's advice, thinking it was all suspect. Essentially one mistake overrides everything else.

Trust is a funny thing. It takes time to earn and gain trust from others, and it can be lost quickly with an action. Trust is a reliance, a belief, a confidence in something or someone. The way the GenAI is framed, and the way a system is presented to a user can have a huge impact on the level of trust we give to an GenAI-system. Tell someone the system is trusted or others are using it raises trust. Tell someone to be wary, and they'll trust the system less.

I find that GenAIs are unreliable but not completely. They are trustworthy in some ways, but not in others. There are a few variations in the article (and in other places) that note that GenAIs are helpful, but we need to review their work. Essentially trust but verify, which isn't a bad policy for any interaction with humans or AI systems. We learn to trust our co-workers, but that takes time. Some we might never trust and always review their work, while others we accept what they give us with minimal review.

It's interesting to see such a wide variety of responses to the usefulness of GenAI systems. Some people find them amazing, some find them useless, some use them daily for small things, some never bother to submit a prompt. I find myself cautiously using them more and more, especially my local models, trying out different prompts in different areas. One thing I got out of the article is I ought to have more conversations with the GenAI, much as I would with a co-worker. I'll try to do that more in the future and see how it goes...

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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