The late Stephen Hawking wrote: “The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence.” He urged business leaders to pursue AI with purpose and prudence but to embrace the coming changes.
We’re entering an age where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a serious proposition at an executive leadership level, preparing us for a future where humans and machines can work together, cooperatively and harmoniously. It is too early to know the precise impact AI leadership will have on organizations. But, in essence, AI has the capacity to augment human decision-making, bringing to the boardroom more complex problem-solving and impartial data analysis than would otherwise be possible, while continuing to value human creativity and innovation.
The business world today is already immersed in AI, and in many scenarios it has opened the doors to new and more accurate ways of working. It isn’t too much of a leap to envision AI being explored in a leadership context. I have been discussing this theme a lot lately, most recently at a panel held at Pearson’s which looked at how CEOs and company chairmen worked together. I mentioned that in some of the territories I work with, we are starting to see AI and robotics augment or be integrated into the board, and while the initial reaction was that this seemed unlikely in the UK, I then ran into the very same panelists at the McKinsey Blink event later in the week, still discussing the ramifications of my question. At Citrix, we have even begun to define legal robotic rights in some of our contracts.
A recent Infosys study, Leadership in the Age of AI, found that for 45 percent of organizations globally, their AI deployments are already greatly outpacing the accuracy and productivity of comparable human activity. A PwC report also found that 62 percent of executives anticipate predictive analytics will augment their business decisions, leading to greater efficacy in the years to come. Although such change brings inevitable concerns for leaders, it is important to focus on the possibilities, and understand how AI might be used to empower human decision-making in the future.
The Pioneers
One of my customers at Citrix Northern Europe is Scandinavian tech firm Tieto, which became the first European company to appoint an AI bot to the leadership team of a new data-driven business unit. Called Alicia T., the bot can participate in team meetings and has the authority to vote on business decisions.
“I am confident that Alicia T. will help us in finding information and making data-based decisions that humans don’t necessarily think of — and thus perhaps create something yet unforeseen,” said Ari Järvelä, head of Tieto’s Data-Driven Businesses, in an interview.
While this might seem premature to some, Tieto isn’t the only business experimenting with bots in leadership. In 2014, Hong Kong-based life sciences fund Deep Knowledge Ventures appointed a computer algorithm to its board of directors, giving the program a vote on the start-ups to invest in. In Japan, ad agency McCann appointed a logic-based system named AI-CD ß as creative director and gave it real client accounts and campaigns to lead.
The Opportunity
Humans can bring emotional intelligence, organizational knowledge, critical thinking, moral judgement, and creative flair to business leadership and decision-making. Yet the human brain also has limitations and is plagued with natural bias, which AI can counteract with hardcore data analysis.
In the field of recruiting, particularly at a senior level, AI could help to tackle issues such as unconscious bias that have previously affected decision making and proved slow to eradicate. Within hiring decisions, AI could use data analytics to ensure there is balance and diversity, also ensuring a level playing field for candidates regardless of gender, age, ethnic origin and location, for example.
Another example that I read about was a CEO looking to reduce the time spent on product engineering. He was told by his management team that each of them was working as productively as they could, but by using analytics, could see that issues existed in the relationships between the managers and the way they worked together. So based on the data, the conversation changed and the problem that really needed to be fixed was identified.
Ultimately, AI equips business leaders with hard evidence, possible outcomes, and predictions, which can help them to make informed, well thought out, unemotional, and data-informed decisions.
The Ethical and Legal Challenges
All this poses questions around the rights AI bots at a senior level should have, versus humans, particularly in the context of end-user licensing agreements. Should legal entitlements be the same, for example? It’s likely that businesses will be pushed to think differently and challenge existing perceptions of how new customers are engaged, and contractual terms agreed, when a bot is undertaking negotiations.
The AI legal landscape is still in its infancy, and how it will be regulated in the future is unclear. For example, who becomes liable for a senior-level decision made by a bot? Some markets will embrace the legal ramifications more quickly than others, but there will be a need for clear guidelines that address ethical algorithms, as well as internal business policies.
The Transition Period
Fundamentally, it is important that business leaders consider the business context, culture, and segment of society they operate within. AI should be considered collaborative, and work alongside humans, rather than being seen as a replacement for human decision making. We should continue to come up with the problems to be solved, and the strength of AI lies in the ability to crunch the data to help us with solutions. I do believe that we’ll get to the point where AI is able to make suggestions, but I don’t think they should be put in a position where they make the decisions.
A good example is driverless cars, having to make an emergency decision which could endanger human life. Who makes the choice? At the moment society and our political leaders aren’t looking far enough into the future at what we’d like to establish, and I think business has a role in highlighting that and strongly supporting the point that just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. While AI certainly has a place in leadership, it’s up to us to ensure that it is a collaboration where both technology and people play to their strengths.
