THINKing Your Way to Success - Using the CertNexus THINK Portfolio to Demystify Emerging Tech

Leadership and Emerging Technologies

I recently attended a conference where I was surprised and perplexed to hear about the misinformation and lack of understanding among industry leaders and decision makers regarding today’s high-impact and rapidly-evolving emerging technologies. This is especially true for the key concepts regarding generative AI, traditional predictive AI, data science, and machine learning. It even extends to issues with smart devices and the data they generate, and how ordinary users can best keep all this data secure.?

This lack of understanding doesn’t only lead to bad organizational decision-making and poor business outcomes; it can have negative impacts on society at large. And that affects ALL of us.

The information and guidelines packed into the CertNexus THINK portfolio can help all business professionals harness these technologies productively and deploy them ethically, to the advantage of their organizations and for the greater social good.??

The Challenges: AI Case Studies

Here are just a few AI-related examples to demonstrate the confusion and issues currently arising from emerging technologies:?

• There is general misunderstanding and little distinction between thin/weak/narrow AI, general AI, and generative AI (GenAI). Without these fundamental concepts, there’s no way for organizations to have productive discussions or produce good decisions about AI implementation.?
• There is fear being spread around "conscious" AI that is just not reality. Two chatbots “talking” to each other doesn’t mean that GenAI tools are sentient! There is no self-awareness or intent in that “conversation.” The bots are simply using each others’ outputs as inputs, and reacting to those inputs in the way their models were trained.
• Few people—whether in business or in the general public—grasp the true extent and likelihood of GenAI “hallucination” or “confabulation.” Every GenAI model can hallucinate spontaneously or can be manipulated into confabulating. The completely incorrect results can sound completely plausible because GenAI output is designed to sound natural, human, and believable. For safety and accuracy, human beings MUST review and verify all GenAI output before they act on it. Is your organization doing that??
• Finally, the Texas A&M case study, while specific to academia, is a great cautionary example of how the misapplication of GenAI can have real human consequences.

AI is the single most important technological advancement in decades. Misinformation like this muddies the waters and can create poor decision-making—and that leads to business losses, reputational debacles, and even social harm.

The Challenges: Other Emerging Tech Scenarios

The challenges for organizations and business professionals are by no means limited to AI.? Generative AI might be the most newsworthy technology right now, but you don’t have to look far in mainstream media to turn up examples of other concerns regarding emerging tech:

• The intrusive or dangerous capabilities of Internet-enabled IoT devices on both the consumer and industrial levels.?
• How misuse or misinterpretation of big data drives poor business decision-making.
• How irresponsible, uninformed, or unethical applications of data gathering, data mining, machine learning, and AI threaten personal privacy, damage businesses and brands, and cause social harm.?
• How human error, confusion, and simple na?veté expose organizations of all types and sizes to the worst security failures and data losses.?

The Solution

The CertNexus THINK portfolio provides vendor-neutral, impartial, technically sound coverage of the fundamentals of core emerging technology topics: AI and GenAI, machine learning, data science, IoT, and data integrity and ethics. CertNexus THINK courses will arm you as a decision maker with the facts, not the hype, about emerging technology. That will position you to make more strategic and informed decisions about one of the most important investments your organization may ever make.

Consider that, according to a senior analyst at Forrester Research, "100% of any company’s future success depends on adopting machine learning." This means every business of every size will need to adopt some level of AI/ML in order to remain competitive. So, it’s not a question of if emerging tech will become part of the fabric of a business but when.

For you and all our CertNexus clients, this is a massive and important decision, one that is not cheap. To make the correct decision for your organization, you need to be armed with the facts and not the fiction. That’s where the CertNexus THINK portfolio comes in.?

The THINK Portfolio

The CertNexus THINK portfolio is designed to frame the most important emerging technology concepts, issues, and guidelines in a way that supports the needs of business professionals in any role or industry.

Here are the most important credentials and courses available in the CertNexus THINK portfolio:?

• GenAIBIZ? (Exam GAZ-110) – helps you as a business professional to grasp the fundamentals of AI and generative AI; to generate text, code, images, video, and audio using generative AI; to identify the challenges of generative AI; and to implement organizational strategies for generative AI.
• AIBIZ? (Exam AIZ-210) – leverages business use case scenarios so that you and all business professionals can understand AI concepts, AI implementation fundamentals, and the impact of AI.
• DSBIZ? (Exam DSZ-210) – equips you and all business professionals to make decisions and drive organizational data strategies with a grasp of data fundamentals, implementation tactics, and potential effects of data-driven solutions.
• IoTBIZ? (Exam IOZ-110) – jump-starts your ability to decipher IoT and understand the components of IoT infrastructure, the IoT challenges to navigate, and the impact that IoT will have on your organization.
• DEBIZ? (Exam DEB-110) – designed so business professionals like you can identify, explain, and document how their organizations identify ethical principles and sources of risk, and how they can create sustainable and ethical decision-making processes.
• CyberSAFE (Exam CBS-410) – helps ensure that end users can identify and avoid the common risks in today’s technology environment and can both protect themselves and also prevent damage to their organizations from security threats.

The CertNexus Mission and You

The mission of CertNexus is to change fear and uncertainty into hope and opportunity. The CertNexus THINK product line can give you and your organization the tools and information to make that transition, achieve your goals, and take a leadership role in the effective, ethical use of emerging technology.? CertNexus, as a globally-recognized certification body and champion of emerging technologies and their place in our personal and professional lives, can be your trusted advisor in this journey.?

Let us take the journey with you. Visit certnexus.com today to take your first steps towards business-level mastery of emerging technology!

This article was written by Kevin Rock and Nancy Curtis and edited by Michelle Farney .