{"id":1922,"date":"2019-09-02T03:56:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T03:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2024-04-24T08:09:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T08:09:03","slug":"four-things-every-business-leader-should-know-about-artificial-intelligence-and-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/ai-ml\/four-things-every-business-leader-should-know-about-artificial-intelligence-and-automation\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Things Every Business Leader Should Know About Artificial Intelligence and Automation"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn 2011, MIT economists\u00a0Erik Brynjolfsson<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Andrew McAfee<\/a>\u00a0self-published an unassuming e-book titled\u00a0Race Against The Machine<\/em><\/a>. It quickly became a runaway hit. Before long, the two signed a contract with W. W. Norton & Company to publish a full-length version,\u00a0The Second Machine Age<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that was an immediate bestseller.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe subject of both books was how \u201cdigital technologies are rapidly encroaching on skills that used to belong to humans alone.\u201d Although the authors were careful to point out that automation is nothing new, they argued, essentially, that at some point a difference in scale becomes a difference in kind and forecasted we were close to hitting a tipping point.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nIn recent years, their vision has come to be seen as deterministic and apocalyptic, with humans struggling to stay relevant in the face of a future ruled by robot overlords. There\u2019s no evidence that\u2019s true. The future, in fact, will be driven by humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines to create value for other humans.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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1. Automation Doesn\u2019t Replace Jobs, It Replaces Tasks<\/strong><\/h3><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen a new technology appears, we always seem to assume that its primary value will be to replace human workers and reduce costs, but that\u2019s rarely true. For example, when automatic teller machines first appeared in the early 1970s, most people thought it would lead to less branches and tellers, but actually\u00a0just the opposite happened<\/a>.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat really happens is that as a task is automated, it becomes commoditized and value shifts somewhere else. That\u2019s why today, as artificial intelligence is ramping up, we increasingly\u00a0find ourselves in a labor shortage<\/a>. Most tellingly, the shortage is\u00a0especially acute in manufacturing<\/a>, where automation is most pervasive.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nThat\u2019s why the objective of any viable cognitive strategy is not to cut costs, but to extend capabilities. For example, when simple consumer service tasks are automated, that can free up time for human agents to help with more thorny issues. In much the same way, when algorithms can do much of the analytical grunt work, human executives can focus on long-term strategy, which computers tend to not do so well.\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe winners in the cognitive era will not be those who can reduce costs the fastest, but those who can unlock the most value over the long haul. That will take more than simply implementing projects. It will require serious thinking about what your organization\u2019s mission is and how best to achieve it.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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2. Value Never Disappears, It Just Shifts To Another Place\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn 1900,\u00a030 million people<\/a>\u00a0in the United States were farmers, but by 1990 that number had fallen to\u00a0under 3 million<\/a>\u00a0even as the population more than tripled. So, in a manner of speaking, 90% of American agriculture workers lost their jobs, mostly due to automation. Still, the twentieth century was seen as an era of unprecedented prosperity.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWe\u2019re in the midst of a similar transformation today. Just as our ancestors toiled in the fields, many of us today spend much of our time doing rote, routine tasks. Yet, as two economists from MIT\u00a0explain in a paper<\/a>, the jobs of the future are not white collar or blue collar, but those focused on non-routine tasks, especially those that involve other humans.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFar too often, however, managers fail to recognize value hidden in the work their employees do. They see a certain job description, such as taking an order in a restaurant or answering a customer\u2019s call, and see how that task can be automated to save money. What they don\u2019t see, however, is the hidden value of human interaction often embedded in many jobs.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nWhen we go to a restaurant, we want somebody to take care of us (which is why we didn\u2019t order takeout). When we have a problem with a product or service, we want to know somebody cares about solving it. So the most viable strategy is not to cut jobs, but to redesign them to leverage automation to empower humans to become more effective.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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3. As Machines Learn To Think, Cognitive Skills Are Being Replaced By Social Skills<\/strong><\/h3><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20 or 30 years ago, the world was very different. High value work generally involved retaining information and manipulating numbers. Perhaps not surprisingly, education and corporate training programs were focused on building those skills and people would build their careers on performing well on knowledge and quantitative tasks.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTo take just one example, the journal\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0has noted<\/a>\u00a0that the average scientific paper today has four times as many authors as one did in 1950 and the work they are doing is\u00a0far more interdisciplinary<\/a>\u00a0and done at\u00a0greater distances<\/a>\u00a0than in the past. So even in highly technical areas, the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively is becoming an important skill.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThere are some things that a machine will never do. Machines will never strike out at a Little League game, have their hearts broken or see their children born. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for machines to relate to humans as well as a human can.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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4. AI Is A Force Multiplier, Not A Magic Box<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe science fiction author Arthur C. Clark noted that \u201cAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic\u201d and that\u2019s largely true. So when we see a breakthrough technology for the first time, such as when IBM\u2019s Watson system beat top human players at\u00a0Jeopardy!,<\/em>\u00a0many immediately began imagining all the magical possibilities that could be unleashed.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nUnfortunately, that always leads to trouble. Many firms raced to implement AI applications without understanding them and were immediately disappointed that the technology was just that \u2014 technology \u2014 and not actually magic. Besides wasting resources, these projects were also missed opportunities to implement something truly useful.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAs Josh Sutton, CEO of\u00a0Agorai<\/a>, a platform that helps companies build AI applications for their business, put it, \u201cWhat I tell business leaders is that AI is useful for tasks you understand well enough that you could do them if you had enough people and enough time, but not so useful if you couldn\u2019t do it with more people and more time. It\u2019s a force multiplier, not a magic box.\u201d\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nSo perhaps most importantly, what business leaders need to understand about artificial intelligence is that it is not inherently utopian or apocalyptic, but a business tool. Much like any other business tool, its performance is largely dependent on context and it is a leader\u2019s job to help create that context.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The future, in fact, will be driven by humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines to create value for other humans. Any viable cognitive strategy is not to cut costs but to extend capabilities. So perhaps most importantly, what business leaders need to understand about artificial intelligence is that it is not inherently utopian or apocalyptic, but a business tool. Much like any other business tool its performance is largely dependent on context and it is a leader’s job to help create that context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":622,"featured_media":3799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[97],"ppma_author":[3337],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-ml","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"authors":[{"term_id":3337,"user_id":622,"is_guest":0,"slug":"greg-satell","display_name":"Greg Satell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/medium_09100e21-0736-4ca7-ac55-7140c8c4d9d2-150x150.jpg","user_url":"https:\/\/www.gregsatell.com\/%20","last_name":"Satell","first_name":"Greg","job_title":"","description":"Greg Satell is an international keynote speaker, adviser and bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change. His previous effort, Mapping Innovation, was selected as one of the best business books of 2017. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36700,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions\/36700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}