Human API? What sort of a position is that?

Verbology is the study of words. The Urban Dictionary takes this further, suggesting it’s a choice of words not typically used in a conversation, often made up.

It is therefore obvious that the principal of a business called Verbology has the license to make something up to conjure a title in an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, in which positions are fluid and hard to define.

Hence, I became NTENDER.AI’s ‘Human API’. For those not technically savvy, API is an acronym for Application Program Interface. There are literally millions of these around the globe used to enable systems to pass information and transact with each other. Without them, our software applications would be siloed, paralysed by their isolation and limited in their utility and potential.

My primary role with NTENDER is brand and communications strategy, but I have always been something of a data and insights nerd, so I need something different to capture how I act as a two-way conduit between the advanced technology team and the tactile business humans that we hope become clients.

The title also alludes to the difference between data and insights - the former being useless if not transformed into the latter. In the commercial world, insights enable better, evidence-based decision making. In turn this enables customer attraction and retention and, ultimately, business growth.

But apart from anything else, being a Human API expresses an aspiration for fun, informality and flexibility within the pressure cooker environment of a start-up enterprise.

This is the third time for me in a start-up business, but the first time as part of a group of entrepreneurial people. Having been there before, I know there will be many twists and turns, successes and setbacks in the months ahead.

I look forward to having a crack in one of the hottest growth areas in the world today - artificial intelligence. Properly managed, AI has the potential to positively transform the future of humankind. All it needs is the application of human intelligence along the way.

Photo: Valentin Petkov on Unsplash