Thinking through augmentation

Key Session – Wednesday, January 17

LDS Commentary

In this crucial area of frontier technology application in the workplace, LDS advocates a conceptual approach we refer to as HU2, or human squared, to represent the exponential value idea of augmented workers. This is our emerging idea of human-machine-centricity and the optimal scenario that will place augmented humans at the center of our emerging business models.

Organizations will use productivity technology to surround the augmented worker with new and exciting work experience possibilities, as the early metaverse, combining social media, augmented reality, virtual reality, and cryptocurrencies, will become ubiquitous and frictionless to access. Employee wellbeing, particularly healthcare, hygiene, and safety, will receive far greater digital focus, while initiatives such as remote team building will assume new prominence as companies seek to use the digital workplace to increase collaboration amongst hybrid workers. A seismic shift in work practices will continue to emphasize the development of digital distance coaching.

Panelists: Paul Hudson , Chief Executive Officer, Sanofi; Nicolas HIERONIMUS , Chief Executive Officer, L'Oréal; Joseph Ucuzoglu , Global Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte; Francine Lacqua , Editor-at-Large and Presenter, Bloomberg Television, Christy Hoffman , General Secretary, UNI Global Union; Saadia Zahidi , Managing Director, World Economic Forum; Azeem Azhar , Chief Executive Officer, Exponential.

Summary

This high-powered panel discussed the most likely augmented jobs and productivity scenarios and how business leaders should shape the most desirable outcomes for their workforces.

Azeem Azhar, CEO of Exponential, touted the fact that pairing a talented human even with these early-day large language models can augment discretionary, strategic thinking.

Joe Ucuzoglu, Global Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte, described C-suite executives as being ‘both excited and overwhelmed,’ while also pointing out that there is a ‘lot of hard work to do,’ whereby significant IT modernization and data structuring needs to take place for AI capabilities to be fully realized. Privacy, IP, and data security are crucial. A huge culture change is taking place.

Paul Hudson, Chief Executive Officer, Sanofi, cited the fact that ‘the genie is out of the bottle,’ and AI beats humans, although AI plus human beats AI.’ He stated that workers don’t understand initiatives like federated learning or training algorithms, or that ‘my LLM is so much more powerful if I share more openly.’ Instead, they want to create their own pilots, not use cases, therefore leaving data in safe places.

Nicolas Hieronimus, Chief Executive Officer, L'Oréal, is excited about the fact that what was once seen as a replacement for routine cognitive work is now augmenting the creative arena.

We must be very wary of what this emergence means. Think of the emergence of the industrial age and the political unrest it created for decades, with workers being exploited in the absence of collective bargaining.

Paul Hudson mentioned the onset of more meaningful work. For example, 130 terabytes of data are analyzed in real-time by Sanofi every day – the equivalent of fourteen million Excel spreadsheets. The productivity gains and insights from this instant analysis are remarkable. He indicated that the majority of Sanofi employees are using what he calls ‘snackable AI,’ which means they are getting ‘nudged’ by the technology to make them more effective.

Joe Ucuzoglu mentioned the big debate about improved productivity versus job destruction. ‘The technology is moving so fast up the curve human capability that this will not replicate the phenomena of the past waves of human innovation…we have to win the hearts and minds of society that this is ultimately going to be a huge benefit to people so that we don’t let the concerns influence the regulatory process so much that guardrails are put in place before we even get the chance to demonstrate the benefit.’

Azeem Azhar predicted that the augmentation period would only last for a few years, as AI will eliminate the human element and task replacement. Then we must consider how we can create new jobs across all economies. He cited Estonia as an example of an economy that can talk about the digital transition and worker augmentation in a very articulate manner.

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Institutional Innovation: Rethinking Organizational Design

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Logical Design Solutions (LDS) is a digital strategy and design consultancy for global enterprises. We create experiences that transform business and help people work successfully in the new digital organization. Clients come to LDS because of our reputation for intellectual rigor, our foundation in visionary experience strategy, and our commitment to enabling digital transformation inside the enterprise. Learn More about how LDS has dramatically improved the way that some of the largest corporations in the world do business.