LLMs and Institutional Change

Current institutional angst (as sociocultural microcosm) and advice regarding the provenance of machine generated words, sentences and documents feels a little misdirective. That is, it still takes considerable intelligence and patience to extract and usefully curate prose or otherwise insightful text from these new tools. If an LLM has been used is itself neither good nor bad; whether or not an LLM has been used with skill and intuition seems to be more important.

Safely, securely engaging with this technology at scale is only half the equation. Most friction is not caused by the technologies themselves so much as it is invoked and inflated by intransigent institutional habits and normative cultural assumptions of what now rapidly become anachronistic organisational practices.

This, particular, Ship of Theseus is no longer simply the persons passing through institutional selection tests. It is the system of information, communication and technology itself that is undergoing relentless metamorphosis and that – IMHO – is a much vaster issue here.

It is individuals that carry the burden of responsibility but it is institutional systems themselves that need comprehensive, rapid and accelerating change. Blindspots, we have them.