I didn't mean that I expected to be taught how to use AI (that was explicitly not a part of the course, which is why I signed up for it haha), but the entire course is based on the assumption that AI is useful, does make people productive, etc. I expected the course to dedicate some time to prove this assumption, especially since AI is plagued by hype. Not once did someone actually back up the claim that AI makes us more productive, we just went straight into the necessities of creating legislation to encourage AI development and tech sovereignty, blah, blah.
So an AI skeptic such as myself is just left wondering while I should care about AI, besides the threat that it is to my career. The sole lecturer that shared about practical implementation of AI talked about using machine vision to stop suicide attempts in the subway and to optimize shipping packaging. But neither of these examples entail PC parts costing an arm and a leg or data centers ruining communities. I feel like the course failed to define what AI even is.
Okay, yes, I see that.
I think the problem is that courses need to teach
something, but they don't know what.
So, imagine that AI as a tool can if used well improve productivity, but if used impair it. At the same time, organisations have systems that
work: they may be better or worse, but they are generally known and stress-tested. AI may often disrupt these, causing a fundamental loss of productivity by damaging established processes, even if it creates productivity gains elsewhere. It's going to take lots of time - potentially
years - to work out how to best use AI to boost productivity and minimise damage and disruption. Secondly, the economics of AI are utterly busted. It's subsidised up the wazoo, so no-one's paying actual cost. Once AI companies are forced to bill customers properly, we could see AI use dramatically shrink, because it turns out some of the AI productivity gains that were established were actually cost-ineffective.
And this is I think where lots of courses on AI are. What is it going to be useful for in the long run? They don't know. The best that they can do is say some speculative ideas and hope some of them pan out. As for its optimism, I guess it made the assumption that anyone who was going to sign up wanted (or thought they would be forced) to use it.