The desire to have one answer one may trust is tremendous. Having that answer would make uncertainty go away.

In the past programs were doing this quite well. They served us, helping us solve existing problems while doing the needed calculations. They were there to provide us with information we could trust.

Such programs solved simple problems and performed a well-defined job. What they had to do was within a scope that was well-understood and clear to those creating the program.

Things have changed since then.

Luckily, we have grown into using programs serving us in a variety of ways, they’ve become representations of processes, they have transformed our ability to use models and for example, predict the weather, and they continue in multiple ways to serve our desire for one answer.

This phase taught us at least some doubt as to what a program is delivering. We have learned to be more curious about the possibility that it might be wrong.

The enthusiasm for AI, however, is a habitual reaction to innovation. It combines our belief that the program delivers the correct answer with our trust in expertise. Whereas the speed at which AI delivers an answer feeds our desire to become more efficient through AI. Both are traps into which we may step with a habit of serving short-term gains.

Stepping into such enthusiasm is how innovation has been possible and welcomed over centuries. It is also clear that we cannot know where this technology leads us to. That is the nature of innovation.

Nevertheless, knowing our own beliefs and desires may help to take speed out of our usage of such technology. Not to slow the evolution down, to make it better.

Neither enthusiasm nor innovation need blind trust.