Amusing and occasionally creepy...
The results were often amusing, occasionally creepy, and also very insightful. For instance, it becomes clear very quickly from the list of names that religious and educational charities are widespread and that the UK charity sector is largely made of up very small organisations.
And to get a sense of the quirkier side of this experiment here, in no particular order, are some of the most memorable fake charities spewed out by my AI bot:
- The Friends of Table
- Youth and Friends of Surgery Castle
- Joseph Syndrome Trust
- People for a Team
- We a Little Blind
- Radio Fire Charity
- Rupert Studies
- Clubs International of Funeral Teachers Imagine and Nursery School
- Cross Child Contact Centre
- Friends of Hilda with Physical School
- Man First Foundation
- Cubbington Cat Club
After I’d got over the fact that I’d built an AI bot that named something “We a Little Blind”, I hit on a couple of more serious points about the nature of artificial intelligence itself.
First off, experimenting with things like AI doesn’t have to be that hard or expensive. Yes, my example is quite silly, but I did it using entirely free and open source tools with publicly available data from the Charity Commission. I was able to muddle through it by myself, and I’m definitely not a data scientist or developer. AI doesn’t have to be super-exclusive or impenetrable to the outsider. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Experimenting with AI
Furthermore, tinkering with this bot gave me a sense of what AI actually is, and the fact that it is much more boring than often portrayed. Most of the time it isn’t about Minority Report style headsets, and much more about fiddling with file types and spreadsheets. (Which isn’t to say that isn’t potentially very powerful!)
Last but not least, the diversity of UK charities is amazing, and most of them are small, local ones. Only 9% of British charities have paid staff, with 91% entirely reliant on unpaid volunteers. Seeing the names that the AI bot generated really brings that point home: the vast majority weren’t as ridiculous as the amusing ones I cherry-picked above and just sounded like tiny little organisations run for local communities.
With a little research and some publicly available data sets and platform tools, you too can experiment with AI to your heart’s content. For anyone looking to find out more, you can tweet me @Rhodri_H_Davies and I’ll be happy to steer you in the right direction.
So if you’re reading this and you’re even a little interested by how AI works, and wouldn’t mind knowing more, I encourage you to just have a go. You’re highly unlikely to create a creepy killer robot. And you’ll also have the chance to experience first-hand the technology that’s changing how we as human beings interact with the world.