Don’t Fix It. Use AI to Reimagine and Build Anew

R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller — creator of the geodesic dome and so much more — was one of the most important visionaries of the 20th century. Because he ‘found himself’ through tragedy. After the death of his daughter and losing his job, he contemplated suicide. But an inner voice told him, “You belong to the universe. You are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

One of his many brilliant contributions was this quote…?

His quote applies to your AI Era ideas and creations…

• Far too many leaders and companies are just AI-izing processes that still have too many flaws pre-built into them. (Like AI-izing recruitment with robot recruiters, sending too many perfectly qualified candidates into a job-seeking black hole, while sucking at screening them for creativity.)
• Stop it! Stop just automating and speeding up processes that were not reimagined as they needed to be! You’re just making hidden flaws worse and speeding up their bad impacts!
• Instead, BEFORE AI-izing anything, reexamine and reimagine the core-premises and purposes of whatever you’re tackling. Ask yourself: “If machines that are smarter than us were designing this from scratch, how would they do it?”
• Make existing models obsolete:? Using our example above… That means not just AI-automating the way recruitment has always been done — driven by resumes, first created by da Vinci nearly 550 years ago — but by first reimagining how we can compare and select multi-faceted dimensions of each individual‘s creativity, curiosity, and imagination, as well as their task-specific talents.

Make Existing Models Obsolete: Getting Started

Pursue Radical Leaps

As Dr. Mae Jemison — first real astronaut to appear on Star Trek, currently leading the 100 Year Starship project — says: Today, right now, we desperately need radical leaps in innovation, technology, and our knowledge and understanding of ourselves.

You do not need to be a Mae Jemison to accomplish that. You can do that from wherever you are, doing whatever you do. You just need be as curious as a child might be who had no boundaries imposed on their curiosity and thinking: “How would we tackle this problem if we were starting from scratch, with a superintelligent robot helping us?”

What’s needed in the AI Era is jumpstarting every project — from the mundane to moonshots — with radical leaps. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, and one of the most commonly used operating systems for machine learning, part of the AI suite of tools, has said, “I don’t have a moonshot project. I want to fix the pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in.”

You don’t need a moonshot project to make radical leaps. You can fix the potholes in your work, product, or service, that are harmful or are frustrating people. You just need the curiosity of a child partnered with a helpful superintelligent AI teammate. In the AI Era, those are the key ingredients!

Some People Will Push Back: Be OK with That

As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer shared: It may take a while for your radical leaps to catch on. Eventually, those leaps will be accepted as self-evident. But first, the StatusQuovians will ridicule, and possibly oppose, your ideas. Hang in there. With the help of your AI buddy, your brilliance will win out!

Be the Moral Compass

As we move into the AI Era, the World Economic Forum is calling upon each and every one of us to be the cultural and moral compass for how technology is used. As we covered earlier: AI creates the potential for massive upsides AND massive downsides…. AI drives the Disruptive Law of 1:1 — where, for every person who benefits wildly from the AI Era, there’s another whose life just got harder, more uncertain, and possibly more perilous, due to unintended consequences and economic inequities of who benefits and who doesn’t.

We need you to be your project’s moral compass:

• Be as inclusive as possible. Include and/or assess the needs of all those who will be impacted — for the better, worse, and the ugly
• Iterate, Iterate, Iterate: Get your first versions into the hands of many stakeholders, not just your primary audience/target group. Repeat for each version
• Listen/Learn, Listen/Learn: Yes with your primary/target group. They’ll buy or use your creation. But also listen/learn from those who will be impacted who are not your target group

To Reimagine and Build Anew: Be Your Best You

There was a specific reason our first half-dozen issues covered how to assess your AI-readiness through multiple lenses:

• Seeing Your Relationship to Work Very Differently
• Understanding What Makes You, You
• AI Era Readiness Assessment… and more…

“You are fulfilling your role [in the AI universe] if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.” Be like Bucky.

Be your best you.

Bill Jensen is a seasoned strategy and transformation executive, advisor to C-suite execs, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, Future Strong, and The Day Tomorrow Said No. Reach him at [email protected].