Isaac Asimov was arguably the pre-eminent science and science-fiction writer of his generation.
A biochemist with a PhD from Columbia University and a professor at Boston University, he was also a prolific writer of popular science and science fiction, publishing or editing more than 500 books during a career spanning over 50 years.
He was something of a celebrity, recognised both as a scientific authority and as one of the great science-fiction writers.
In 1966, his original Foundation trilogy won a special Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, beating, amongst others, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It was an award given only once.
Much of his popular science writing has inevitably been overtaken by scientific progress. That's the nature of science. But his science fiction has stood the test of time remarkably well.
Alongside Foundation, perhaps his best-known work is I, Robot, a collection of short stories published in 1950 exploring the relationship between humans, intelligent machines and the rules governing their behaviour.
In 2004, the film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was released.
The film isn't actually an adaptation of Asimov's book.
It began life as an entirely separate screenplay called Hardwired, written by Jeff Vintar. When the project was developed into an I, Robot film, the screenplay was adapted to incorporate elements of Asimov's fictional universe, including characters, concepts and his famous Three Laws of Robotics.
The resulting film shares a title, some characters and some important ideas with the book, but tells an essentially different story.
If you'd only seen the title, you'd reasonably assume it was a film of the book.
And if you'd watched the film without having read the book, you'd probably still think it was a film of the book.
It would take reading the book, or independently researching the film's origins, to discover otherwise.
None of this is a criticism of the film. By all accounts it's an entertaining and successful science-fiction thriller.
But that's rather the point.
Something can be impressive, convincing, professionally produced and thoroughly enjoyable without necessarily being what you assume it to be.
Which brings me to AI.
We're increasingly using AI to produce work that is articulate, polished, persuasive and often genuinely impressive.
And it's very easy to mistake those qualities for evidence of something else: accuracy, understanding, sound reasoning or reliable research.
Sometimes those qualities are present too.
Sometimes they aren't.
But here's the important distinction.
The film I, Robot doesn't need to be misleading for us to misunderstand its relationship with Asimov's book. We make that assumption ourselves, based on what we've seen.
And AI doesn't need to produce something demonstrably wrong for us to draw an unjustified conclusion from it.
The responsibility for those conclusions remains with us.
We can delegate research, analysis, drafting and any number of other tasks to AI. But we shouldn't confuse delegating the work with delegating accountability for what we choose to take from it.
Perhaps something worth remembering as we race to incorporate AI into our businesses.
And finally, a recommendation.
If you haven't read Asimov's I, Robot, do.
It's short, accessible and full of fascinating ideas about intelligent machines, the rules we give them and the unexpected consequences of those rules.
More than 75 years after its publication, its exploration of the relationships between humans and intelligent machines is remarkably relevant to some of the concerns we have about AI today, and perhaps some we ought to be thinking about more carefully.
While I can't realistically hold a candle to Asimov's writing, in Chapter 16 of Unlimited I explore the relationship between testing what we think we know and remaining curious about what we don't, and why both are so important to building successful businesses.
