Artificial intelligence is changing the way businesses operate, offering powerful tools to analyze data and boost productivity. But as companies look to use these tools, building resilience is key to managing AI’s challenges and uncertainties.
This year’s Frontiers of Business Conference looked at how companies can use AI thoughtfully – by managing risks, supporting workers through changes and staying flexible in a fast-changing world. Here’s a summary of the day’s discussions on how AI can both support and test resilience in today’s business world.
“Even if the tide is rising, it’s probably not rising equally for everybody, and figuring out how to manage that unevenness is the challenge for us all.”
In a lunchtime conversation, staff writer Derek Thompson of The Atlantic outlined a few ways AI deployment could play out. AI could lead to full automation in some instances, eliminating the need for human workers. But more often, AI is likely to amplify human work, improving productivity and enabling us to accomplish more. In some cases, there may be no mechanistic need for a human to remain in the loop, but we may keep people involved in these work chains, if only for humane reasons. And in other cases, incorporating AI could merely bring in a new source of distraction with little benefit.
While acknowledging that AI does hold the potential to undermine or devalue human expertise, David Autor, Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, argued that most innovations of the past have not replaced work but extended human capabilities to enable entirely new things. Leveraged in this way, AI can free people to spend more of their time solving bigger problems. “We should be looking for moonshots,” he said, suggesting that AI could be used to advance societal good in areas like healthcare and education.
Several speakers posited that AI is likely to have the greatest impact in boosting the capabilities of low-skilled workers, rather than “making high-skilled employees superhuman,” as Thompson put it. Inevitably, however, there are winners and losers in the adoption of new technologies across sectors and geographies, noted Josh Lerner, Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School. “Even if the tide is rising, it’s probably not rising equally for everybody, and figuring out how to manage that unevenness is the challenge for us all,” he said.
As leaders seek to leverage AI for business gains, Steve Malik, chairman and owner of the NC Courage, suggested that companies should empower their workers to be out in front on learning and using the latest tools. “The best way to control change is to be the change,” he said.
Assuming a fatalistic view of technology’s inevitable march onward, it can be tempting to brush aside worries about job losses or concerns over entrusting machines with certain historically human activities and decisions – why fret if it’s going to happen whether we like it or not? Autor argued that we must resist that temptation and recognize that we have agency in determining not only what technology can do but also in how it is used.
The world has seen radical new technologies before. Lerner pointed out that technology alone is not what changes how we live and work, that it’s about people. Articulating a vision of the future role of technology in our society, Thompson suggested that we can better align our resources with our values. Bruce Van Saun, chairman and CEO of Citizens Financial Group, added that the tension between innovation and safety means that some fields, such as finance and healthcare, might be purposely slower in adopting new technology in order to ensure that standards and expectations around things like data protection and fairness are being met.
As leaders seek to leverage AI for business gains, Steve Malik, chairman and owner of the NC Courage, suggested that companies should empower their workers to be out in front on learning and using the latest tools. “The best way to control change is to be the change,” he said. Heather Miller, vice president of digital transformation for Smurfit Westrock, stressed the role of experimentation in this process. Starting small with employee-led pilot tests can help companies quickly gauge what’s likely to be helpful and what’s not. Van Saun added that AI integration is likely to have the biggest effect when it is introduced into existing processes. It can be especially beneficial to identify areas where incorporating AI could simultaneously benefit worker productivity and customer satisfaction, bringing a double benefit for the company.
Learning best practices for new technology takes time. While the specific path for integrating AI into businesses and workforce capabilities is yet uncertain, Von Saun suggested that universities should embrace new technology and give students an appreciation for how to use it productively.
But even as they learn to wield AI tools ever more effectively, the Honorable Sarah Bloom Raskin – partner at Kaya Partners, Colin W. Brown Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at Duke University, and former deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of the Treasury – stressed the importance of continuing to cultivate the strategic thinking that is always going to be uniquely human and critical to business success. “There is still going to be the role of human judgment, which … I would argue can be informed by AI but can’t be replaced by AI,” she said.
By centering people and embracing experimentation, humans – not computers – will chart the path for the AI revolution.