AI in the business driving seat

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The spread of smart technologies like AI across organisations is being driven by the seeking of competitive advantage, but are senior leaders prepared for the impact?

Copyright: brainstormmag.co.za – “AI in the business driving seat”


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AI will enable leaders to consider questions they previously couldn’t or wouldn’t have dared to ask since the answers were too complex to attain.

Organisations leading in the adoption of AI and smart technologies are implementing it across core business functions and into full production. The key to the successful rollout of these new-breed technology platforms is a high degree of senior-level leadership engagement and sponsorship. But they will have to be cognisant of the potential impact it will have on their own positions.

The ‘always-on work’ mentality and advanced analytics have led many to question the role of the company executive. According to the ‘Work 2035’ report by Citrix, a third of respondents think senior corporate leaders will be ‘partially or completely replaced by technology over the next few years. More than 70% of those surveyed believe that most companies will have a central AI department in the future, and nearly 69% believe that the CEO will work with a ‘chief of artificial intelligence’ in that time frame.

Kristian J. Hammond’s article ‘Please don’t hire a chief artificial intelligence officer’ in the Harvard Business Review argues that the ‘very nature of the role aims at bringing the hammer of AI to the nails of whatever problems are lying around’. He states that a focus on AI as an exclusive role in the executive will increase the focus on the technology and may erode the focus on the business strategy.

Source: SwissCognitive