Machine Learning v Human Learning.
Machine Learning (AI as it has been branded) has been around for 20 years. It just didn’t have the funding or commercial focus to make money until recently.
Currently, it tells us stuff that we tell it. It needs information and instruction to give an output, which mostly comes from us humans. The AI the majority of us have access to doesn’t learn further than how it has been programmed.
It certainly speeds things up and I, as someone with the attention span of a gnat, love it’s convenience. but let’s keep it real: it isn’t going to negate the need for service-led business, not yet.
But can it help us improve our businesses effectively? If AI relies on the information it is given, how does it compare to living things and how they learn?
Cybernetics – What it is and how feedback affects learning.
There is a thing called cybernetics, which is how both living things and AI learn.
Cybernetic means relating to cybernetics – the science of control and communication in complex systems, whether living (like the brain) or artificial (like machines). It focuses on how systems self-regulate using feedback loops to achieve goals. Essentially, it studies ‘steermanship’: how systems steer themselves toward a purpose, whether it’s a thermostat adjusting temperature or a robot learning.
Dogs learn that wanted behaviour gets them positive feedback in the form of a certain tone of voice and a treat, and unwanted behaviour gets a stern ‘NO!’ After a while, the positive voice alone is the learnt reward.
AI can learn from feedback. It can adapt it’s responses depending on the prompts that we put in (a process called ‘prompt chaining’). As a result it can perform more complex things than we would expect dogs to (sorry Bob) but not compared to the human brain, currently.
As humans, we are driven not just to survive but to thrive and we too react to feedback.
When we go to the gym, win competitions, buy stuff, drink alcohol, eat sugar, we get feedback in the form of dopamine. The dopamine is a reward so we want more.
We find calculus time-consuming, so we invent computers. Et cetera.
Simply put, we all need feedback if we want to achieve our goals. If we don’t ask for it, it will still find its way to us, but it may not deliver the outcome that we expected or wanted. It is, therefore, important to consider the type of feedback we ask for.
Why is complex feedback important?
In business, we do ask for feedback but not always for ‘complex’ feedback.
Google reviews are fine, but by their nature they generate only very basic responses and do not loop back with enough detail to adapt our processes effectively.
AI can summarise but it doesn’t make the feedback any more insightful.
Customer surveys are usually clumsily written with little understanding about human emotion or behaviour.
To improve customer satisfaction, in-depth feedback, that looks at several aspects of what our customer experience is, works best.
That’s where we come in.
Humans are complex and fickle, so stop worrying about AI taking your place and start worrying about your customer experience. Business has never been so competitive.
Mystery shopping delivers complex feedback so if you want your teams to deliver a better customer experience, get in touch!
We are a small team who have worked together studying humans for many years, including Bob, the Jack Russell.
https://www.silentcustomer.com/
