March 4, 2022
By Margie Hlava Founder, Chairman, President, Access Innovations, Inc.
View from the Top

Creating explainable AI

The world continues to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) technologies whether they realize it or not. Whether interacting with a chatbot on a website to get answers about a product or typing a text message that is auto-filling in words, AI is working behind the scenes. The proliferation of AI in publishing and knowledge management is also taking hold where it is becoming commonplace and transparent while being right in front of us. As we begin our march into 2022, here are a few trends we see:

♦ Audience—The primary audience is no longer people; it is the computer. People are secondary or even tertiary. This will continue to be the case in 2022 and beyond.

♦ Documents—Documents are no longer static. They can be changed easily and quickly so what an author cites may no longer be in the cited article. Publishers will need to verify submissions on a continuous basis rather than just at the point of submission to validate references.

♦ Content in Context—Snippets of information may lead the user to take content out of context or lead to unintentional misinformation. In 2022 the knowledge worker needs to be sure to check sentiment of content and verify accuracy. With the increase in misinformation and disinformation, validation and verification will continue to be a burdensome but necessary task.

♦ Information Access—When there is inline tagging, people can access information directly without the surrounding context which gives faster access but may lead it to ironic conclusions. In 2022 the knowledge management industry must address not only what they can search but understand that any AI behind the scenes needs to be explainable. Embracing AI techniques such as inline tagging will help access, but users need to take time to truly understand what they are reading.

Having watched the AI and machine learning industries blossom over the past decade, Access Innovations is in the unique seat of helping the industry create explainable AI by leveraging our Data Harmony platform. The industry and our platform will continue to evolve as the needs and use cases around AI change. We are confident that publishers and knowledge workers will also embrace the change as they see the benefits of AI automation.