35 Technology AUTHOR’S ATTESTATION: This article was written entirely by Jeff De Cagna AIMP FRSA FASAE, a human author, without using generative AI. I t has been nearly two years since the surprise arrival of ChatGPT unleashed generative AI (GenAI) on our world. In this time, as the initial novelty of GenAI- enabled tools has started to dissipate, we have learned a staggering amount about GenAI’s myriad limitations and problems, and the grave risks and harms these technologies create for humanity. At this point, the discovery of yet another significant GenAI downside feels like a daily occurrence. It seems quite natural then that the association community, comprised of organizations originally founded to bring people together to solve common challenges and bolster human well-being, should be at the forefront of the serious and vital endeavor to ensure the ethical, purposeful, and responsible adoption of AI technologies in general, with a specific focus on GenAI. Nearly two years later, however, this conversation is still not happening in the association community, and it is our urgent responsibility to reorient the direction of the dialogue right now. Why We Need a Different Conversation Among advocates and evangelists, there is an unshakeable commitment to the narrative of GenAI’s inevitability, i.e., it is here to stay, and we should embrace it without delay, despite clear evidence of mounting trouble. (For information on more than 700 documented AI risks, please visit MIT’s AI Risk Repository at https://airisk.mit.edu.) The increasing influence of GenAI’s rhetoric of revolution and transformation is palpable in nearly every sector of our economy, including in associations. In response, we have decided to center our community’s GenAI conversations on use cases, tool/vendor selection, and implementation approaches. Given everything we already know (and continue to uncover) about GenAI hype and these technologies’ inherent fallibilities, we should regard the unquestioning certainty and confidence of GenAI’s predicted benefits over the long term with well-deserved skepticism. Moreover, having devoted more than two decades to exploring the subject of association transformation, I want to caution all stakeholders in our community to be clear-eyed in their recognition that “transformation” does not necessarily imply a positive result. Instead, we must acknowledge that it is entirely plausible GenAI will transform our community’s futures in ways that will be detrimental to our purposes and people, irrespective of our dedicated and well-intentioned efforts to create different outcomes. While it is difficult to accept these disquieting realities, our affirmative choice to develop and act upon a deeper understanding of what is at stake is a necessary first step toward crafting an inclusive and vigorous community-wide exploration of what ethical, purposeful, and responsible AI adoption demands. This next focus of our community’s GenAI conversation must take into consideration at least three levels of activity, although not always in this order of importance: THE ASSOCIATION COMMUNITY NEEDS A DIFFERENT AI CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW By Jeff De Cagna AIMP FRSA FASAE
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