A solution in search of a problem
“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.” – Terry Pratchett Back when I worked in the IT department of a higher education institution, many was the time a member of the university executive or administration would come into the IT offices with a brilliant new idea. This was usually something like “We need a blog!” or “We need a wiki!” back in the old Web 2.0 days when blogs and wikis were still cutting edge web technologies. When asked what we needed them for, the answer was more often than not along the lines of “Well, Warwick have got one!” In other words it was just a case of keeping up with the institutional Joneses. One of the IT management team had a very astute response to this kind of request which I’ll repeat here. “What do you need to do? Don’t come to me with a solution. Come to me with a problem.” It’s a piece of advice that I’ve started to think of recently as software houses and companies scramble to add AI to their products and services, chiefly because other ...