The Mega Transformation that Generative AI Will Bring

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There are transformations, and then there are mega transformations. I’ll give you one guess, which one I think generative AI is.

That’s right: In my 30 years working in the disruption space, this is one of the most transformational shifts I’ve witnessed.?

In 1993, I got a job in newspapers because I could see that the internet was poised to be one of these mega transformations for media. I realized the free access to information provided by the world wide web would jeopardize the business models of publishers, and I wanted to be part of that shift. As a technology analyst, I had a front-row seat covering search engines changed the face of marketing. And I saw how social media would change how we create and maintain relationships and wrote my first book about it. More recently, I’ve been writing about how companies and their leaders navigate digital transformations.?

This experience provides context for the moment. Although artificial intelligence has been around and active for 20 years, we’ve seen explosive growth with generative AI in just the past eight months. What started as a chatbot is quickly becoming a mega transformation that stands to reduce the costs of cognition and creativity fundamentally. What was once the domain of knowledge workers is now being democratized to the masses and putting the power of this intelligence into the hands of anyone who can create a prompt.?

As with all mega transformations, we’re at an inflection point. To prepare for what’s to come, we need to figure out how this technology fits into our business by looking ahead and learning from past disruptions' lessons—and failures.?

The 4 Transformational Changes to Watch For

I’ve been observing these transformations through the years and zeroed in on the critical transformational changes I anticipate seeing in the coming months because of generative AI.

1. The Customer Experience

Suppose you’ve ever used an online retailer’s chatbot. In that case, there’s a good chance you found the customer experience to be pretty awful: You ask it a question, and it doesn’t give you an answer—it merely steers you toward an FAQ page based on rules and processes coded by someone who can’t possibly anticipate every type of question being asked.

But as generative AI improves, so will this experience. Soon, these once-useless chatbots can be a key tool in surfacing what I call those “less frequently asked questions.” They will be able to give you an exact answer based on the quality of your question or your history of questions, and soon, they’ll be able to offer more personalized experiences. Based on your chatbot usage, it could someday take a single question and generate an entire page of customized products geared specifically to you.??

Call center managers already anticipate that artificial intelligence will handle routine text and voice requests, providing customers with detailed, personalized, and empathetic real-time responses.?

As technology evolves, so will customers’ expectations for what it can provide. And that has enormous implications for people like call center workers.?

2. The Workforce

One of the biggest concerns surrounding generative AI is who will be impacted. Indeed, we’ll likely need fewer people to do today’s tasks, but my prediction is this: AI won’t replace humans, but humans with generative AI tools will replace humans without them.

Right now, advancements in call center automation have led to a marked drop in the cost of conversing with customers. In fact, because of these AI tools, it costs virtually nothing to scale operations. This will have a significant impact on the employees who staff traditional call centers, many of whom are from disadvantaged parts of our society.

This could mean significant workforce reductions, or it will require re-skilling of that workforce, which takes time and energy on the employer's part—and employees' willingness to learn a new role, like a prompt engineer.??

A good analogy for this is the arrival of ATMs. Banks didn’t necessarily get rid of all the bank tellers. They converted their roles into those of financial advisors.?

Of course, not every new job created by generative AI can be filled by those impacted by it. Understanding and preparing for workforce productivity issues will be crucial for transformative leaders.

3. The Strategy

Generative AI will transform our customers and employees, but it will transform the essence of how we deliver on our mission and objectives.?

The dot-com era has countless examples of shortsighted strategies surrounding mega transformations, and Barnes & Noble’s response to Amazon is particularly relevant. The largest brick-and-mortar bookseller simply built a web interface to its existing storefronts with plans to fulfill from its stores. That simply didn’t work. The required speed and breadth of inventory needed a fundamentally different strategy. So, Barnes & Noble had to rebuild their e-commerce business from scratch.?

Simply slapping this new technology onto existing business models will produce short-term gains. A better approach is to rethink how our business functions and make fundamental, transformational changes to products, services, and operations.?

4. The Culture

In utilizing generative AI, we welcome an entirely new entity into our organization. Like any other new coworkers, we must learn how to have a healthy relationship with artificial intelligence. In many ways, we must treat these new technologies as something we’ll depend on as much as we’d want to rely on a colleague.?

What does it mean to have an AI assistant? An AI collaborator? And what kind of culture are we going to build around this? How much agency are we willing to assign and delegate to AI agents? How are we going to be responsible, ethical users of AI?

Three Ways to Prepare?

Generative AI is a hugely transformational technology we need to prepare for right now to leverage the possibilities it presents. So, how can disruptive leaders ready themselves for what’s coming??

1. Provide AI 101 training to all employees

We must make no assumptions about what people know about generative AI and how to use it. Education and training for every employee who could use these tools in their jobs is essential. And that includes training on ethical and responsible AI and discussions about what responsible and ethical leadership looks like going forward.?

2. Move AI research out of the tech space

Most organizations have a department that’s looking at AI, and it’s run by technologists and led by the Chief Information Officer. When it’s siloed in this way, it’s not providing a transformational point of view to the greater organization. Set up an Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence or AI Council that is cross-functional, business outcome oriented, and led by someone closely aligned with strategy as fast as you can.

3. Become co-pilots of these technologies

We need to integrate generative AI into the work we do every single day. That means we must stop saying, “I don’t think this could ever be as good as a human,” and start experimenting with how good it can be— and understanding how much it can do. We need to give employees across the organization the agency to learn how AI can help them do their jobs better. Because by making this technology accessible to them and putting the power in their hands, we’ll figure out what is possible and what’s not.?

Your Turn

What transformations do you anticipate seeing in the next few months—or years—because of generative AI? How do you plan to prepare for generative AI in your organization?