Dear LinkedIn...Please Believe Me!

I had a conversation with my friend and colleague Mariane Power this week about LinkedIn and its algorithmic changes. A little ironic really. That LinkedIn will use AI to detect if my articles are written using AI.

Hmmm. So if I use Grammarly to correct my grammatical errors, I am using AI. And if I use an AI to create an image like I did last week, and declared it by the way, clearly I used AI. Do they change the way the algorithm works for me?

My engagement was low last week. About 20% of what it normally is. I asked a few colleagues about their engagement - and they had similar experiences. Some used AI in the same way I did, others did not use it at all. The results were the same. 100% of people I asked were down on engagement. Dear LinkedIn, please explain?

So, the images, the videos, the words this week are all 99% mine. I've quoted Gemini! And if there are any mistakes, please forgive me, Grammarly is not switched on. I won't be winning any badges from them this week.

So to reiterate, LinkedIn (and Substack by the way) are now using AI to decide whether I've used AI in my article writing. Which is quite ironic, don't you think? And it reminds me of the fail - succeed - fail - succeed - fail pattern of life. And the perspective required to interpret failure and success as you will. From your own individual experiences. From the stories of each of your lives. From your own problems to be solved, as indicated by Marc Randolph in the forward to Celebrating Success One Failure at a Time.

Let's take a journey through the way AI has shown up for me this week.

A rocket crashed into the moon. We knew it was going to happen. I felt quite passionate about this. For me, it is catastrophic that we are playing in fields that we do not understand. Why would we interfere with the universal scheme? Haven't we harmed our Mother Earth enough?

But the event wasn't catastrophic for everyone. Some waited in anticipation to witness it - what images could be captured? It was, after all, an inaugural event. Others wondered why we were taking such a chance. And I won't go into the details about the effect the moon has on our planet. You can search that on your preferred AI yourself. Some would see crashing into the moon as a failure. Others as a success. I believe we might have stopped the collision and changed the trajectory if we wanted to. I could be wrong.

I asked Gemini that question. Here's the response. I wonder if this will affect my engagement this week?

The collision of the discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage with the moon was unintentional (making it a failure of orbital disposal), but scientists treated the resulting impact data as a scientific success.

When does a failure become too detrimental? When is it not a stepping stone to success? In my work around Moonshot Thinking (notice the segue there? Moon collision to Moonshot Thinking), we ensure conversation around first-order and second-order consequences.

Let me narrate an experience to demonstrate this via a personal observation. A personal case study. Which means my experience has not been validated by a scientific experiment. Let me also state that a hypothesis is sometimes arrived at through observation. The observation is formulated into a hypothesis. An experiment is formulated around said hypothesis. It is then proven or disproven by the formulated experiment. The results are held as scientific proof until an observation is made that may disprove the original hypothesis.

So the story...

I am fortunate enough to be a frequent visitor to a Greek Island - which shall remain unnamed (I wonder if Grammarly would correct that to 'nameless'?) For years I swam in the same waters. I snorkelled and admired the marine life. I swam close to the fish. I floated in the waters. And I enjoyed the ease of the Mediterranean Sea.

Then desalination was introduced near this swimming place. It was a blessing for those who couldn't access fresh water without having to buy countless plastic bottles or fill their bottles from the island's natural springs. Those were dependent on rain. And desalination would certainly reduce the plastic used on the island. Should have been a win, wouldn't you agree?

The year the desalination plant was switched on, I noticed a few things. I noticed extra salt - wondering what the “white stuff” was all over my body. And when I went snorkelling, there was no marine life to observe. No fish to swim with. And when I tried to dive down, the buoyancy was beyond anything I had experienced before. I literally couldn't dive down.

So I went seeking answers. I did some research. Please do your own. Assisted by AI or not - your choice. The conclusions around the downsides or cons of desalination plants include but are not limited to: high energy costs; the process leaves behind brine; toxic waste that harms marine life; amounts of pre-treatment cleaning chemicals detected in the water that is returned to the ocean. These are known as first-order consequences.

So what might some second-order consequences be? Fishermen are affected through their livelihood, as damage to the marine ecosystem hampers it. The restaurants on the Greek Islands and therefore tourists feel the effects. The marine ecosystem plays a major part in planetary survival. And that's for starters.

And consider this. Some people often talk about smartphones and technology causing environmental harm through a resource-intensive life-cycle and a high carbon footprint. An alternate perspective is that because of the Smartphone, I don't need to buy a camera, a photo album, a flashlight, a radio, a watch, and an alarm... and countless other devices that are now integrated into my Smartphone. What is the measure of the materials that are no longer required for manufacturing these goods? What is the energy that is saved in the manufacturing process? What are the transport costs and associated pollution? I'm not a numbers person, so I don't know the answers. I am sure there is an AI for that.

When AI made its grand entry (as opposed to the soft entry it had been making for years), universities and schools were concerned about AI doing all the work and students becoming lazy. They banned its use - all the while using AI to sweep across assessments to detect plagiarism. Perhaps they could have been teaching AI as a tool, a resource, one that students would find in their workplaces when they graduated, and be required to master.

So full circle back to LinkedIn. Dear LinkedIn. If I want to use AI, why can't I? If I use creative prompts to create the content, does that cause harm? Do you really think I am sufficiently uneducated that I can't tell when an article has been written 100% by AI? And do you think i am sufficiently clueless , that I don't know how to use the resources and tools at my fingertips to improve my work? To check my sources? Readers will either like what I do or they won't read me.

The LinkedIn mission statement is to, “Connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful”. The vision statement is to “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce”. Might I ask how playing around with the algorithm achieves this?

Lucky for me, I don't write for the algorithm. Or engagement numbers. I write because I enjoy it. And I have something to share. Thank you to anyone reading that has made it this far.

And if you spot any mistakes, please let me know in the comments.

Celebrating Success One Failure at a Time is now available as a book, an audiobook, and an online course. You can bring this conversation to your organisation as a keynote, workshop, or leadership programme.