A Company's AI Culture Program is a Win-Win-Win Move

As a consequence of the enthusiasm in recent months surrounding Generative AI, there is increasing talk about companies investing significantly in Artificial Intelligence and having set up technological programs for the immediate future aimed at benefiting from the potentials offered by these systems.

It's not always just marketing. Beyond, of course, the big players that develop them as their core business, there are certainly also companies in other sectors that are considered benchmarks in the market, which have embraced AI for some time, and are now, more than others, reaping the benefits in terms of revenue increases and operational efficiencies (see link 1 below).

However, viewing Artificial Intelligence solely as a technological component is reductive, limiting AI to specific use cases and failing to generate the momentum necessary for companies to truly transform around AI.

Upon reading various articles on these topics, one can discern that there is at least one aspect that the market is not completely addressing, which concerns how to graft Artificial Intelligence into the fabric of human intelligences that comprise a company. In other words, alongside technological programs, there must also be initiatives to develop a genuine AI culture.

This is where things get complicated because, in the first instance, what does it even mean to have an AI Culture program?

To answer this question, we can generalize the concept of culture with reference to corporate culture, which, as is well-known, is a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes instrumental to a company in achieving its business objectives. This is crucial: corporate culture is not an end in itself, but a mean to achieve a result. Therefore, defining an AI Culture program begins with asking: what do we want to achieve through Artificial Intelligence in our company? Once this question is answered, it is possible then to determine how personnel should behave to achieve these results and plan accordingly how to influence their behavior to change or complement existing practices (i.e., the culture).

A significant risk is evident: it is all too easy to employ Artificial Intelligence to reap immediate benefits through process efficiencies, which, in the real world, typically results in increased automation and staff reduction (see link 2 below). This may justify the current lack of focus on a healthy AI Culture: if people are replaced by automation, the element required for cultural change (i.e., the people themselves) is missing. The market, at least for now, rewards this approach.

Besides cost-cutting, the other benefit AI promises is revenue increase, which is a much more complex issue and difficult to leverage. While it is easy to understand the efficiencies that can be gained by observing, for example, software auto-generation tools, it is much harder to predict how much revenues can increase through hyper-personalization of products, or how much more effective a marketing campaign would be if supported by Generative AI. The result is that based on the information available, anyone choosing between certain efficiencies now or a potential increase in revenue in the future, would opt for the former.

However, it is also clear that something must be done about this because, when considering the above alongside the rapid pace of technological progress and the sluggishness of regulatory and legislative bodies, the enormous risks of degradation of social infrastructure and welfare systems become apparent (consider for example the recent Goldman Sachs report estimating 300 million jobs at risk due to AI – See link 3 below). In my opinion, this is where the topic of AI Culture should come back into play.

Since companies do not exist in isolation but are embedded in society, to which they have fundamental responsibilities, it should be in their primary interest to encourage all employees to be proactive in innovation founded on AI. This innovation should aim to identify tangible opportunities for growth with measurable returns that can convince company leadership and markets to invest.

An AI Culture program should, therefore, address the following: facilitate transparent dialogue between various corporate levels, making everyone openly aware that some roles will no longer be needed but, thanks to the new tools available, many others can be created. Each individual should contribute pragmatically to create new, useful, and profitable products or initiatives, and improve what has always been done, without reservations in being assisted by a digital collaborator.

To achieve this, an AI Culture program should consist of at least five elements:

• Information (preparing the soil). Understanding the ever-changing context of AI, aimed at providing everyone with the necessary foundation to become familiar with it. This should be done in an informative and accessible manner to reach the largest possible audience: AI is, and will be, too important in our lives to remain ignorant of it.
• Education (planting the seeds) – More specialized trainings to develop and learn how to use the new technologies that are rapidly emerging. Mastery of these tools supports the generation of well-founded ideas for new use cases.
• Innovation Groups and Brainstorming (sprouting ideas)– Regular brainstorming sessions, in which solutions are sought based on objectively identified problems, or based on opportunities enabled by new tools or case studies. These sessions must also include the clear qualification of costs and benefits for realization: ultimately, solid ideas and accurate cost-benefit analyses are necessary to convince an investor to allocate capital.
• Communication and Recognition (harvesting and selling the - intellectual - fruits) – Regularly inform the entire company of the progress being made and reward the most innovative and winning ideas, as well as virtuous behaviors. This generates healthy internal competition and the possibility of reusing what colleagues have built in other areas of the organization for their own function, scaling up AI faster.
• Feedback and Adaptation (improve the farming practices) – An AI Culture program with the aforementioned characteristics has a decidedly bottom-up structure because it must be perceived as necessary primarily by the employees. For this reason, it is essential to regularly capture their impressions and make necessary adjustments to make it even more engaging: always keep in mind that the most brilliant ideas are born through positive employee participation.

In addition to all this, there should be structured plans for career development and transformation of organizational processes centered on AI, adapting to what the company is achieving and the directions it is taking with everyone’s contributions.

Companies' openness to the constructive use of Artificial Intelligence will have a positive impact on their value in the medium term precisely because they will have demonstrated a tangible commitment to maintaining a healthy society. Conversely, those that have harmed it through the use of AI aimed solely at cost-cutting (and hence staff reduction) will be heavily penalized, just as companies that do not pay attention to environmental impacts or do not act in the interest of communities are penalized today.

Structuring an AI Culture program that aims to achieve the above objectives is, therefore, a win-win-win move for companies, employees, and society. It is worth taking action now to capitalize on the benefits that will undoubtedly result from it.

I leave here below the links to some additional article that you may find interesting:

1. JPMorgan Chase Raises Target for Value Realised from AI
2. BT to cut 55,000 jobs, replacing a fifth with AI by 2030
3. Goldman Sachs Predicts 300 Million Jobs Will Be Lost Or Degraded By Artificial Intelligence