President at GHD Digital.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly emerged as a disruptive force, influencing humans professionally, socially and culturally. With its ability to process vast amounts of data and make complex decisions, I’ve seen it become a catalyst for transformation across business sectors, from healthcare to transportation.
More recently, generative AI has caught the world’s attention. Representing a significant breakthrough in the field of AI, generative AI enables machines to create new content, ranging from text and images to music and entire virtual worlds. But for all its hype, we must remember that these are still early days.
Wise leaders will know that AI should not be a hammer in search of a nail. We must get the foundations right first. Asking the right questions about how AI should help us is a good start. So too, is addressing the potential challenges and risks.
So, how do we unleash the true potential of AI’s capabilities in business and help us combat complex problems like climate change? I believe we have work to do.
Human intelligence and artificial insight need to thrive together.
AI is a tool that augments human capability. It isn’t a replacement for us; it is in service to us. Generative AI may seem almost human. It can communicate coherently with us, understand our preferences, biases, strengths and limitations, and develop empathetic relationships with us. But it is humans who set the goals and provide context and oversight. AI contributes scale, speed and novel insight.
We must ask ourselves: What do we want to use AI for? What problems do we want it to help us solve? This is our responsibility. It’s how we will co-exist and thrive together.
Be prepared for its rise and impact.
Anyone who has used generative AI like Bard and ChatGPT will know how powerful it already is. It can sift through vast amounts of data, find information, summarize themes, generate ideas and provide recommendations.
According to findings from Goldman Sachs, generative AI could raise global GDP by 7% in the next ten years. This data is further supported by research my company conducts, which found that advancements in generative AI have the potential to drive a 5%-6% increase in global GDP over the next decade. This could come through innovative products and services and increased consumer and business spending due to AI adoption and personalized offerings.
In fact, we don’t think it unrealistic to expect it to redefine human-technology interaction as profoundly as other pioneering innovations such as the silicon chip and the smartphone.
Recognize its potential power to address more complex problems.
In my own field, we are seeing generative AI shake up the engineering landscape, enabling design automation and transforming output speed, scale and quality—all overseen, of course. This computational creativity imbues machines with the ability to generate novel, functional and optimized design solutions. Imagine this applied to sustainable design. By learning from a dataset of efficient and sustainable designs, generative AI could produce new design ideas that optimally balance aesthetic appeal, functionality and environmental impact.
For instance, climate modeling could be impacted by generative AI. Traditional AI systems can analyze historical and current climate data but cannot generate new scenarios. Generative AI, through its ability to generate new data patterns based on learned information, could create a myriad of potential climate scenarios that account for various factors like greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation rates or ocean warming. This could enable climate scientists to explore various possibilities, from best-case to worst-case scenarios and everything in between. (I’ve previously spoken on this in an interview with BNN Bloomberg.)
The potential applications of AI to address such complex issues go beyond climate change. Nearly every business could be impacted by generative AI in some fashion. However, that means we need to be fully aware of the risks and potential challenges associated with generative AI.
Be aware of the risks and monitor upcoming regulations, but experiment cautiously.
To successfully adopt AI, we need to fully understand its limitations and potential biases and adopt safeguards to ensure responsible use. Pressing risks with generative AI include privacy, attribution of content, algorithmic bias, racism and disinformation; the latter is often inherent in the training data and inaccessible due to its proprietary nature. There’s also the potential for the model to fabricate or hallucinate information.
“Hallucinogenic error” is where the model generates false or unexpected results unsupported by real-world data. These can include invented content, news or information. This issue was highlighted earlier in 2023 when a lawyer used ChatGPT for research in a legal case, only to discover that the information provided was entirely made up.
Regulation is coming. China is rolling out some of the world’s earliest AI regulations. These will come into force this month, while the U.S. and EU are drafting AI frameworks. This legislation may have ripple effects in other countries if passed.
We, as business leaders, must put our own guardrails in place, while proactively creating opportunities for employees to experiment responsibly with AI in their work. As stated by PwC, “As the ones closest to the day-to-day work, they’ll have valuable insights into where AI might be most effective.”
Take Tangible Steps Today
Navigating the potential of generative AI will be challenging, but there are sensible steps I believe leaders can take. Following are some steps that the board and CEOs can take:
1. Prioritize digital transformation and AI embedment.
2. Understand sufficiently both the potential and risks to take a balanced approach to AI strategy execution.
3. As this is a rapidly evolving space, learn what is happening in the broader ecosystems, not just their industry. Don’t let the fear of AI stop you and don’t be complacent.
4. Recruit competent leaders and leverage external advisors to accelerate the journey.
5. Actively contribute to the evolution of the body of knowledge and use cases, as generative AI is still in its infancy.
6. Advocate for responsible and ethical use of AI aligned to the integrity standards of their organizations.
With over 75% of companies expressing their intention to adopt AI technology within the next five years, it seems there is little time to waste.
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