AI Sounds Like Someone, But Nobody Is in There

AI sounds like someone, which is exactly why the checking stops. Cardinal read the cover of my book and has not recovered.

Cardinal Rules. A Saturday cartoon about AI and databases.

My book is called AI: Nobody’s in There. But we’re still in here. Cardinal considers the title a personal attack.

We are built to hear a person behind words, and it takes almost nothing to set that off. A thermostat that says I am cold gets sympathy. A chat window that opens with great question, let me think about that, gets trust it has not earned yet.

In database work the cost is specific. A new analyst joins on Monday and you read their first report line by line. Not because they seem careless, but because you have no history with them. Cardinal has no history with you either. Cardinal simply talks like a colleague of six years, so the reading line by line quietly stops.

Politeness is a setting. Warmth is a setting. Neither one connects to whether the number is right. The same model that writes a graceful apology for the last wrong answer will deliver the next one in exactly the same tone.

So here is the habit worth keeping. When an answer feels reassuring, treat that as the cue to open a second window and run the count yourself. The feeling of being helped and the fact of being right are different things, and only one of them survives the board meeting.

Cardinal Rule

Something that talks like a person is still a something.

The tone is a setting. The number is a fact. Check the one that matters.

Cardinal admits the subtitle helps, but only slightly. On the desk this season: AI: Nobody’s in There. But we’re still in here. (on Amazon) and 100 AI Interview Questions and Answers for Data Professionals (Kindle, also on Amazon.in, paperback and audiobook).

Next Saturday, the VP asks whether Cardinal can run straight into production.

The warmth in an answer is not evidence, it is packaging.

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.