The Background

OpenAI’s founding belief is to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate [a] financial return.”?

Recent advances by OpenAI’s engineers put this belief at risk, highlighting differing philosophies within the AI community and the OpenAI board: effective accelerationism (e/acc) and decelerationism (decel).?

• E/acc generally believes that technology, including AI, will improve the lives of humans today and tomorrow, and the most significant risk is NOT pursuing this technology.?
• On the other hand, most in the decel community believe that advanced technologies, such as artificial general intelligence (AGI), which can understand and reason at the same level as humans, will jeopardize our existence.

This dichotomy exists among your leadership team, too. Some members may embrace technological advancement, while others are skeptical of its impact on your employees. Whichever side of the debate your executive team lands on, AI innovators and AI detractors, the impact of AI is unavoidable.

The Catalyst

OpenAI’s goal, defined by Altman at DevDay, is to be “one single product… magic intelligence in the sky.”

Regardless of whether you believe Altman’s statement, it should be a directional force in your strategic planning because AI adoption will require the following:

• a significant capital investment in IT staff and capabilities
• reimaging business processes for automation and speed,
• redefinition of the value added by human labor, and?
• an upskilling/reskilling function to mitigate the economic impact of displaced workers.

The Results

Today, you can begin aligning your organization with the following steps:?

1. Begin by reimaging the customer journey. What tasks can be automated or enhanced to delight your customers??
2. Set the AI innovators to work redefining business processes to deliver clean data in support of this enhanced customer experience.
3. Invest in additional IT resources to expedite insight generation from the AI algorithms to accelerate improvements to the customer experience.
4. Similarly, approach the detractors with empathy, establish a working group to dispel fears among customers, and build the foundation of a proactive upskilling/reskilling infrastructure among employees.

The time to plan for AI's seismic impact is now. As a leader, you can avoid potential boardroom disputes rooted in less-informed opinions and skepticism. At The Berkeley Innovation Group, we specialize in creating and revising strategic plans to incorporate the impact of AI. We sit with your cross-functional teams of forward-thinkers and AI-skeptics to assess your IT infrastructure, business processes, retraining programs, and overall readiness for your AI transformation.