What do cataloguing and cars have in common? One answer is that developments in artificial intelligence are changing both of them. Our February Journal Club discussed three recent articles about metadata and AI, and what these meant for us.
Our first article from the Economist(1) in 2019 looked at self-driving cars, an AI development which is highly visible in the news. We talked about the differences between automation and AI. The ordinary cars we drive are already automated and reliant on technology, but they are not making decisions about where to drive. This is a key issue – people don’t like the idea of machines making decisions. Also, people feel that humans are fallible and machines shouldn’t be – people have higher expectations of machines than they have expectations of people. Until people’s expectations and perceptions of AI change, the impact will be limited. For example, the evidence is that Google self driving cars are very safe, but self driving cars have safety drivers because human legislators make it a requirement.