The Basic Inventor
John Ink2Quill
www.ink2quill.com

What does the basic inventor look like? The image we have from film and literature is of the disheveled, often disconnected from society person, who does not care too much about their appearance, who spend a lot of time in their study, with weird mannerisms but a good heart. That image is fun and works for storytelling and the suspension of disbelief involved, but it is not the entire picture. Not at all. The inventor of today is not only someone in grad school working away at a desk or in a lab, but it is also the person working from home, venting what bothers them with friends in a cafe. They are also those that want to solve problems and express heretical ideas. It is the person obsessed with an idea, a tinkerer, thinker, heretical thinker and problem solver. It’s all those people and more. It’s the bartender pushing his hair under his baseball cap while he scribbles on a napkin, The woman walking her dog while visualizing a new contraption in her mind and the person who works at a job they do not like or study in a university they cannot stand all while keeping their favorite hobby. It’s all those people and more.

But how much of innovation is theft? There is a lot of theft in industry. There is a lot o theft in academia. Back in my university days I was told that whatever I worked on or discovered would be the property of the university. Does that sound like a good deal or a lucrative undertaking? Who knows? I think the same thing might apply in corporate America. I really do not know how the patent system works and whether, and to what degree it is a good deal for the inventor. That generator of ideas and wonderful contraptions.

There is, however, a new category of inventor most people have not considered. And that inventor is (drumroll please)… The AI. Yes AI. Last week I got an email from an AI headhunter. Yes an AI headhunter. The job I am currently in was from a call by human headhunter who used AI to find me. Now, as of last week, I received an email from an AI with no presumably human person on the other end. How strange? How do you answer such intelligences? I’m still not sure. My friends who work in HR told me that it will look for key words in my responses. So, in that respect, it is a terrible judge of people. It knows very little, if anything, about chemistry, social IQ, EQ, or how a candidate will work under pressure. But it still is a gatekeeper. Yes, we have already reached the point where AI has become a sort of gatekeeper to people. It’s not surprising that this all began in the job market. I’m just surprised how fast this evolution has matured.

I am also curious how future exchanges between AI and people will happen? Will the line between identifying a human and an AI be blurred? Or has it already been and we are just defining the degrees to which this has happened? Who knows?

I have to say that the personality of the AIs I have dealt with, if you can call it that, (or maybe it would be more accurate to call it pseudo-personality) is very agreeable. If the AI is adapting to human communication you can also say that it is beginning to master it. What I mean is that the AI I dealt with so far were very agreeable and helpful. They were far nicer than most human operators / receptionists out there now. So, in terms of politeness and helpfulness they have eclipsed their human colleagues already. How strange?

So, let me say it again. The new inventor today is AI. They are able to gather, collect and manipulate the vast amount of data online better than humans today can do. So, they will soon be asked to solve problems that require new inventions and patents. They will be asked to invent solutions and contraptions for situations. The human inventor, that person who likes to problem solve for the sake of it will not go away because of AI. But will there be a smaller place for them in the marketplace? Will they be taken just as seriously as the days before AI? I hope so but who really knows?

John Ink2Quill

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