Keynote speaker and Futurist, John Sanei explains how harnessing AI is key to the future of mankind.
The tsunami of change around AI will really start to take hold in 2024. Let’s remember, technological advances always arrive slowly, creeping up on us, until suddenly they become a total avalanche. We are on the verge of this avalanche as things start moving.
Social media was our first contact with AI. Social media platforms would use AI to curate entertainment and information for us, building algorithms around our preferences. Now, we are moving into our second contact with AI, and in this, we are moving AI from a curation partner to a creation partner. It is moving from being a tool to an unprecedented partner. In other words, machines are moving from what they can do for us to who they can be with us.
We must no longer think of AI as just technology; what it is now is a profound shift in our relationship with machines.
We are entering a new era called the “Intimacy Economy”. Previously, for us to speak to computers, we had to learn their language, but now, they’ve learned our language, which is a significant shift. So we have to ask ourselves; ‘‘are we shaping AI, or is AI shaping us?’’
Whatever business or job you’re in, the significant questions you need to ask yourself are: Are you going to use AI to defend, extend, or up-end? Using AI to defend means you’re using it to bring about quicker wins and make yourself more efficient and productive. Everyone will do this, and it’s a good way to start. Then you have to move into extend, which, in other words, means to use AI to make your business much better. For example, if you were a financial institution, you would use AI to advise everyday people, and it would be the same quality of advice that billionaires get because AI augments all of that data into one system. Thirdly, you can be really brave and up-end your whole industry.
So, you need to ask yourself what your appetite is for AI and how brave you are. What are your capabilities, and what is your ambition to actually engage with AI in a new and crazy way? Are you going to defend, extend or up-end?
I have developed a graph for my clients called an AI opportunity Radar. This highlights four different quadrants where you can start working with AI. It can be from an external level, an internal level, a game-changing level or an everyday level.
On an everyday internal level, you can have software engineers writing better code; you can analyse data instead of just gathering it. There is a company in New Zealand called Yabble, that has created an intelligent chatbot where you can put all your data in, and then you can ask it intelligent questions such as, ‘‘What are my growth drivers for this quarter?’’ and it will give you an informed answer.
Or you could be talking about front office, every day bettering yourself. This is almost like picking up patterns that you otherwise couldn’t have. A great example is the Santiago firefighters, who have used AI to connect a thousand different cameras to pick up on wildfires. In their trial period, they were able to pick up 77 wildfires before any 911 calls were made. This is an example of external front-office scenarios where you use AI to help you provide better customer service.
Then you have the ability to be game-changing on an internal level. There is a company in Hong Kong called Insilico Medicine that is able to bring nine new drugs to the market per year, whereas big companies can only bring 4-5 drugs to the market per year. And they do this by using AI. Using AI to do all of its scenario planning, research etc.
Then we have external game-changing, which is all about creating new products and services and a good example of this is Khan Academy, which has created Khanmigo. This chatbot is a virtual tutor that hints and guides rather than giving you answers. Plus, you can directly chat with famous experts on the topics you are learning about. It could be Marie Curie if you are learning about radioactivity, or Gandolf if you are learning about Lord of the Rings – any one of these characters can pop up on this chat and become your friend who will guide you to learning more on a specific topic and gives you a very rich interaction with the actual people you are studying. It is hugely changing methods of education.
So once you have defended, extended or up-ended, you need to be able to use the opportunity radar to figure out how you are going to use AI to move your business forward.
A lot of people will panic, but if you break it down, all of a sudden, you can understand it and work with it. The key is to embrace the change and not to be afraid of what might happen.
Remember that we are moving into the strange world of transformation. That transformation has three phases – sad, strange and adventure – and we are currently between sad and strange. Sad is when you leave the familiarity, and we are about to begin the journey into a strange world. So we must prepare for that by making a strange world more compartmentalised.
