So welcome to A.I.
Wonderland.
While I call myself an A.I.
expert,
that is a humbling term in these days.
This technology and this world is changing super
rapidly and reasonable experts often disagree on where
things are going and what potentials we can expect.
But I think it's important that as business leaders and
entrepreneurs out in the world that we're able to make decisions
and informed decisions based on the best available knowledge.
So what I'll share with you today is
my best take on what we know today.
And
that can change quickly,
so don't put too much into my words.
The most important new rules we have in this world
are to understand how processes will be changing.
I think it's important and helpful to think that a lot of
the changes we see today are about assisting human processes.
So we see people adapting tools into their workflows,
we see co-pilots,
we see people use off-the-shelf,
chat GPT-like tools to copy paste information back and forth.
They're fundamentally doing the same thing they always have done,
but now they're doing it faster and more intelligent using A.I.
That's a common first step when we see these kind of innovations.
What we're starting to see in some places and what
we'll see going forward in more and more places
are when we start to augment processes.
We start to change processes because as the A.I.
enables certain things to move faster,
we start to change the process to fit the technology.
The common saying goes that initially you fit the
technology into the process and the second step,
you fit the process to the technology.
You have to adapt the organization to what it looks like.
And then finally,
I think the third stage that we'll start to see,
and we are seeing it in the most straightforward and easy places,
but it's a lot more rare,
is true automation.
Where the A.I.
are using system integrations and higher levels of intelligence to
actually go in and fully replace tasks that humans previously had.
And allowing humans to start focusing on
entirely different things in the organization.
These are some of the new rules of how the world
are changing here in the wonderland of A.I.
We will first look at process assistance,
then process augmentation,
and finally full process automation.
It's not all that A.I.
will do,
but it's a helpful way to start thinking
about the opportunities that A.I.
present to businesses.
And what that enables when you can automate things at scale,
or what kind of changes you will actually do to
processes and what that will enable you to do.
When you venture into wonderland,
it's also important to bring some tools along.
Like,
what are going to work in this world?
The traditional toolbox of what you used to
do business might have changed quite a bit.
I'm proud to say that I bring you the starter kit of A.I.
We advise most businesses to lean into three core things.
And we sort of cheekily called it the three T's of A.I.
So,
number one,
we recommend you to present the tools of A.I.
to all employees.
Fundamentally,
if your employees doesn't have access to
a powerful frontier large language model,
you can think of it like a basic clone or similar things to ChatGPT,
where they can start working with the
technology in their own processes,
you really need to do that.
This is a really democratic technology.
It's really easy to approach,
but you need to allow people in the
organization to actually use the technology.
So,
number one recommendation for the starter kit is to actually
make the tools and technology available to employees.
The second thing is about training.
Because the technology is weird.
And while it is democratic and while it to some degree is intuitive,
you quickly get into the weeds.
And most people who have played around with the
technology also find that there are strange limitations.
And one moment it works,
and the second it doesn't.
What are hallucinations?
How do we deal with biases?
What are the security ramifications of these things?
We need to be able to work with these
technologies in an intelligent way.
And that fundamentally requires training.
And training can be very different for different groups of people.
But that's the second important point
that we want people to work with.
Is to give the tools available.
And then give people the basic training to be able to work with them.
So we can start imagining what's actually possible with this.
And the final T is a little task force.
It can differ a lot depending on your industry,
how impacted you are,
your ambition and overall organizational size.
But it's really important to have some people sit down and
think about what AI means for your business in a structured way.
And here we really want you guys to go beyond what are sort
of the immediate business pains that you could focus on.
But actually ask like,
what role do we play towards our customers?
What kind of things does this enable us to do?
How do we become a better partner to our suppliers?
What are our competitors doing?
But sit down and have that structured moment of
thought about what does this actually mean for us?
You might have to revisit that as the rules change.
But just doing everyday business is pretty risky at this point.
The final thing that I think is really important
to consider is the role of risk in all of this.
Because we meet a lot of organizations who says,
this is cool,
this is innovation,
but we need it to be risk free.
We might be willing to invest a little bit in it.
But because it is this new and fancy
thing and we're doing it on the side,
but we have a core business to run at the same time,
it really needs to not interfere too much with things.
And that's okay.
Maybe your business isn't hugely affected and
maybe you have to take a zero risk approach.
It's just a fair warning from our perspective that
you won't get really far with that approach.
Because AI is,
at its fundamental nature, a new thing.
And it enables and it forces
organizations to do and think differently.
Your processes will change.
Your ways of working will change.
And potentially your relationship to
competitors and customers will change.
And that carries inherent risk.
And if you aren't able to accept or willing to embrace that,
then you will miss out on a lot of these things.
And eventually that becomes a risk in and of itself.
The world is changing and this is hugely disruptive.
And disruption is risky and disruption
can be frustrating and annoying.
But leaning in and accepting those kind of risks is really important.
But it also means that senior leadership who carries
that kind of risk needs to go into the organization,
needs to go in and pursue and accept and
give people comfort that they actually,
not just are willing to accept those risks,
but they encourage people to think outside the box.
Of course,
there are ways to mitigate the risks as well.
Boxing experiments in,
doing things in a controlled way.
But fundamentally,
it's really important that we go out and try these
things and have the courage to really dare to
imagine what could be possible with the technology.
Go out in your organization.
Talk to each other.
Get inspired.
Find the technology.
If you see something really cool where the AI model did
something that you might not have thought was possible,
share it with somebody.
Share that excitement and share that moment
and start talking about if this was possible,
what else might actually be possible.
That's really the most important and where
we really fuel a lot of the innovation.