Are you ready for the AI Storm?

Woke up today to the forecast news of winter storm sweeping across most of the states in USA over this weekend. Some areas are likely to hit badly whereas some areas are not really prepared well to handle even minor impacts. And then, there is all the talk about how Americans are getting prepared for this storm - stocking up foods, groceries, generators, warm clothes, and so on. Of course, there is the NFL wild card weekend too that everyone is looking forward to. Well, I wish everyone stays warm and safe and hope we see minimal weather impact, so that everyone can cheer their favorite team and have fun.

2024 is going to be the year when AI, Generative AI specifically, is going to step outside of the labs and enter into real world. The pilots, proofs of technologies, incubation and experimentation will continue, but leading organizations that have leveraged the GenAI hype and already toyed with the technology are ready to start adopting and rolling out enterprise use cases in production. Some of the solutions may not be perfect. Fail fast, learn and get better will be the mantra. As early adopters they want to get out there, do it, keep improving and see the value realization sooner to gain competitive edge. This will rapidly grow their own confidence as well as the followers. AI is like a child. Sooner you start training, the better it gets. The speed at which the technology is advancing and maturing with early learning is unprecedented. Several business surveys and white papers show that a higher percentage of interviewed CxOs do see themselves using AI within their organizations or products in next 1-2 years. I am fully convinced that the year 2024 is a major stepping stone in scaling up GenAI for enterprise, production ready use cases and setting the foundation for years to come. ?

The question is, are we ready for this AI storm to come?

Broadly, I classify “we” into two major groups. I call them AI Consumers and AI Value Creators. Consumers are individuals such as employees, product/app/service users and businesses who will benefit from AI or may get affected by AI. Value creators are basically AI technologists, researchers, solution developers and companies that will create AI solutions to bring use cases to life.

Here is my take on how all of us can be prepared. Not to weatherproof ourselves, but really to soak in it and strive.

AI Consumers - Enterprises

Embrace and Encourage

Whether you are on the cutting edge or think you are not ready yet, you are already on the AI journey in some or other way. Today, AI is touching parts and aspects of your business. Leading enterprises look at AI as a business value accelerator and look at the possibilities. Another good reason for enterprises to adopt the AI is the talent gap. The shortfall of technical skilled workers is ever increasing. With the raising global living standard, inflation and the shortage of workforce, benefits of labor arbitrage are neutralizing fast. Shifting towards productivity enhancement also being knows as technical arbitrage to augment available talent pool is becoming a workforce strategy. ?For the ones on the fence, adoption of AI or not will soon become an existential question if not already. And then there are negative actors who are finding newer ways to be destructive. It is imperative that the business in wait and watch mode at least dabble with the technology and experience how it works and what it can do and make it part of their strategy. Rather than being threatened, business leaders have to embrace it and provide a safe playground, a sandbox and access to technology for their employees to begin experimenting. Getting the exposure, education and awareness will build the confidence. Whether you are a leader, own a function, a business operations user, or a technologist within the organization, it is critical to have at least the foundation knowledge so that you can leverage the technology for the good use and you stay on top of it. ???

Have an AI Strategy – Re-Imagine the Future

To reap maximum benefits from the buzz and the promise that AI brings, it is time to get to the drawing board and devise a holistic strategy. AI can create value to the businesses in multiple ways – make your products, solutions, and services better, provide new features to your consumers, streamline your operations, improve productivity and so on. You need to make some fundamental decisions. Do you want to go all in with AI first principle? Do you want to adopt a more flexible agile approach to build incremental value aligned with technology advancement and maturity as it comes? Or, you want to use a more mixed and phased option with short-term and long-term goals? It is important to set a vision or I should say a dream of possibilities. Re-imagine what that future is going to look like for your business and yourselves and articulate it well. And of course, that sketch cannot remain on the drawing board, it has to be intentionally and constantly communicated to the organization, consumers/end users, investors, analysts and everyone that matters to your business.

AI Governance

A more operational yet of paramount importance aspect of getting on to the AI journey is to have a robust governance in place. With the explosion of technology, value creators/providers, solutions and services there is possibility of several different efforts sprouting and growing inorganically within different parts of the organization. This will lead to non-standardization, confusion and chaos. There has to be a method to the madness for value stream delivery, from ideation and incubation to the scaled implementation and ongoing operations. Some of the key elements that need to go into the governance setup are – architecture, data and technology standards, AI ethics board, responsible and trustworthy AI framework, risk management, security, regulatory compliance, vendor strategy, skill development plan, organizational change management, and ongoing operations.

Prioritize the Value Realization Cases

Alright, AI has a lot of promise, and it has to be embraced to leverage it. But, what problem do we solve or what value do we create, right? In line with the strategy and governance, there needs to be a concerted effort to prioritize the right use cases to maximize the impact and the benefits organically. A classic 2x2 matrix of effort/cost vs value/impact may not be enough. A third dimension of ‘Risk’ has to be added. By Risk, what I mean here is the aspect of any potential negative impact due to trustworthiness, socio-ecological impacts (people and environment), compliance, security etc. Benefits of AI should always be balanced against the impacts with right guardrails around it.

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AI Consumers - Individuals

Awareness, Safety and Trustworthiness

AI is spreading fast in everyday life. Even if you are non-techno savvy common user of generic things such as your home equipment, television, mobile phone, internet etc., AI literacy is of critical importance now. As a wise and aware consumer, you need to know the source of app, the data being used, the purpose of it and how accurate and safe it is. As we would teach cyber literacy for safety to our kids and teenagers, it is important to put that self-discipline to know a little more about the apps, tools, devices, products, and solutions we are using in our life. We have already started seeing occasional news bits about accidents caused by fully autonomous cars under test, or frauds and newer cyber threats. We need to apply know before you go policy and make sure it is tested and proven before blindly adopting and relying on it. The first and key principle of AI is that it is built to augment human and not replace human. We need to never remove ourselves from the equation just because technology is doing it for us. ?

AI Value Creators

Upskill

We, the technical community, have learned to re-calibrate ourselves through several technology and life changes. Most recent one being adopting a remote work style during COVID-19 pandemic. AI is not just a buzz or short-term trend. It is here to stay, and it is going to have long lasting impacts and opportunities. We all are at that point again where we need to realign ourselves. Whether you are an executive, salesperson, architect, designer, developer, tester or whatever role you have, there are opportunities for everyone and there is need to pick up the newer skills in this area and build your expertise. For this next chapter in our work life, we got to equip ourselves with the technology, tools and experience. We got to be ready to be that value creator to make a positive impact. Thankfully, there is ton of training and certifications available publicly to get on this journey.

Use Case Identification

Again, there are hundreds of thousands of problems to be solved and millions of ways in which you can bring the value to businesses and to the world. It is critical to understand your client’s strategy and priorities. Or even better, be the trusted advisor for your clients and work collaboratively to develop the strategy and roadmap. Then put a cost-risk-value decision framework in place and address the right use cases. It will also follow the decision making of your solution options. Knowing what offerings are available with different providers, strengths and weaknesses of available models and providers, build vs buy etc. will play a role in realizing the use cases.

Trustworthy and Responsible AI

What you create as a value can have deeper impacts on people your solution touches. What data and sources of information you use, where and how you acquire it, how accurate your models are etc. to develop your solution plays a vital role in the outcomes and its impacts. You need to be very conscious of these factors and be very transparent. You need to constantly ensure your decisions and solution passes the trustworthy and responsible AI criteria.

Security

In today’s world, security cannot be an afterthought. Secure by design has to be the core principle along with trustworthy and responsible AI. If your solution is not secure, it can be compromised and misused by bad actors resulting into significant unrecoverable negative impacts that could hurt people, businesses, environment, and world in general, in many ways. As an AI value creator, it is your responsibility to use secure design and coding practices.

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And, what about the job security and human intelligence?

This is a topic in itself and will need a dedicated thread. AI is interesting, intriguing, and scary. Many people, including me, rightly feel threatened. Variety of jobs could be made much easier with AI and truly may not need current level of efforts, in some cases even eliminating the manual effort altogether. Pundits and experts have their own opinion and thought leadership on this topic and have differences amongst them. Here is my own perspective about it –

1.???? Technology is still and will continue to mature. To be able to see solutions that will eliminate human intervention even in early use cases, it will be anywhere between 2-5 year time. This time allows us to re-skill ourselves and evaluate other alternatives and higher value activities. This could be AI value creator itself who will have a good 10-15 year career at a minimum, but even if everyone is not technical and doesn’t want to be an AI value creator, there will still be plenty of areas to explore where human skills will be required.

2.???? Generative AI is like an extrapolation chart without the values, labels, legend and title. To use it we will need a context, references and inferences out of it. Only a human can provide it and put the outcomes into right context.

3.???? Do you ever feel like working long hours? No time for family, friends, hobbies, and things you want to do? Stuck in a mundane routine job? Feel stress and fatigue due to overwork? I certainly do, and I hear variations of that from many of my friends and colleagues. If AI is going to make my job even 30 or 50% better and gives some time back to me, I will take it. I will be happy to re-learn the life and get back to it and enjoy things I want to do. May be its time to do that now!

More on this topic, later.

Well, at least I have taken up on AI training and reading a lot about it. I will be interested in knowing what you think about it and how you are preparing yourselves for the exciting yet anxious times to come.

Note: All the thoughts in this article are my own and it does not represent my employer or any other group I belong to. Wherever any external references have been used, they are indicated as such.