All Artificial Intelligence Is Not the Same
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
A few months ago, we published an article about whether it’s okay for job seekers to use artificial intelligence to get help with their job search. I hope you’ll check it out. The reason I wrote the article is because recruiters were saying that they can tell when someone is using artificial intelligence (AI) to write their resume. And the question becomes, does that really matter? Organizations are hiring people based on their skills and abilities, not their resume format.
Well, a new conversation has emerged in the use of AI, and this involves photos. I’ve seen several recruiters saying that they can tell when someone uses an AI generated image for their headshot. This started some interesting discussion (again!) about whether it matters because from a recruiting perspective, organizations should not be using physical appearance as part of their hiring standards. This could be considered a bias and/or discriminatory. If you have questions about this topic, you should reach out to your friendly employment attorney and get answers to your questions.
However, the conversation about AI generated images did make me wonder so I decided to do an experiment. I prompted two different artificial intelligence programs to generate an image of me. Here are the results:
- The image in the middle is me. No filter. Taken by Mr. Bartender.
- The image on the left was generated by ChatGPT.
- The image on the right was generated by Google Bard (now being rebranded as Gemini).
The purpose of this exercise wasn’t to find a new headshot to use for professional purposes. Honestly, I wouldn’t use either of them. What was interesting to me was how different they were – even though we asked them both the same thing. It made me realize that all artificial intelligence is not the same.
Take this to an organizational level. As companies start to think about their artificial intelligence strategy, they have to consider:
- Are we going to use AI?
- If so, when should we start using AI?
- What types of things should we use AI for?
And here’s a new question for the list: What AI software is best for us? Because depending on which artificial intelligence program you use, the results could be very different. Just like these two images of me are very different.
This was a really fascinating experiment. If you’re playing around with AI, you might want to try it and evaluate the results. I still believe the best way to learn about the capabilities of AI can be through conducting these types of experiments. Start small and then as you learn more, make them more complex. These experiments make us more aware so as we’re thinking about our personal and professional use of artificial intelligence, we can ask smarter questions. Better questions will lead to better outcomes.
New technologies will continue to be introduced and that’s a good thing. We have to find ways to learn about them.
Image created by DALL E when prompted by Sharlyn Lauby to illustrate ChatGPT artificial intelligence as an avatar.
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