I’ve presented on technology at our medical writers conferences for years, not to pad my CV or use more than my fair share of oxygen, but to provide my colleagues with a deeper understanding of the technologies they are increasingly being asked to use. One colleague who attended several of my cybersecurity sessions offered that I “always scared the sh*t” out of her, so I asked why she kept coming back for more. “Because it’s information I need to know,” she responded without hesitation.
Exactly. As professionals, using technology makes us more efficient, but understanding the technology we use deepens our practice, allowing us to offer our clients more informed and thoughtful work. In the case of AI, the apps we use in our work represent only a small corner of the technology’s universe. These apps change daily, and mastering techniques for using specific apps, that is, becoming a super user, requires an investment of time in something with a short shelf-life. Which begs the question, is refining your technique working with a specific app the best way to spend your time, or is it a distraction from building the domain knowledge about AI and other underlying technologies that can deepen your practice?
In the biomedical research area alone, the application of AI to theoretical and real-world problems seems to increase exponentially almost on the daily. Which is why, as a medical communication professional, there is value in understanding what AI is, how it works, and how to write about it. This is the topic of my latest article, Communicating About and With Artificial Intelligence Applications, which was invited by the AMWA Journal for this summer issue. And they were nice enough to make this article open access (the Journal is otherwise paywalled), so you can read this article whether or not you are an AMWA member.