Responsible leadership is needed to harness the power of AI

The New York Times warned about “labor-saving devices” coming for our jobs in its 1928 headline the “March of the Machine Makes Idle Hands.” Ninety-five years later, pseudoscientific research is prompting headlines that claim artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity.

History repeats.

The truth is that no new technology is all good or all bad. The narrative around AI has been pessimistic, but despite the prognostications of doom, I see more reasons for optimism. The positive outcomes of the broad adoption of AI can far outweigh the negatives. If leaders mitigate the challenges and amplify the opportunities, we can leverage AI to create new value for humanity.

Learn from the ARC of history

Alarmism often follows major technological developments, a pattern repeating throughout history. Ten years ago, it was automation and robotics. In the 15th century, the printing press caused panic among scribes fearing job loss. While it reduced the need for manual writing, it also created jobs and transformed publishing into a trillion-dollar industry.

If we understand these cycles, we can learn to navigate them more effectively and sustainably. Each wave of new technology follows a three-phased ARC:

• Augmentation, where it enhances existing jobs;
• Replacement, where it substitutes existing jobs; and
• Creation, where it paves the way for jobs that never existed before

Business leaders have enthusiastically embraced AI’s augmentation phase. Public perception, however, is less optimistic about augmentation because of concerns regarding what will come during replacement. Yet business leaders and the public are still missing the most important aspect that came from advances like the printing press and computers. They need to consider the net gains that AI will bring during the creation phase.

Augmentation can be exciting, but while weighing the use cases for AI, business leaders must also be preparing for the replacement stage, shortening the timeframe of agony and its strategic and interpersonal impacts. At the same time, they should be envisioning new job opportunities to accelerate the creation phase. These phases do not need to be sequential—by driving them as fast as possible within responsible constraints in whichever order is relevant for a business, we can move faster toward giving people a better future.

The role of leadership

Some leaders may genuinely believe it when they tell employees that AI integrations will help them do their jobs better, but no one can deny the reality of the replacement phase. Scribes lost their jobs with the advent of the printing press. Automation and robotics replaced many labor roles.

The success of all technology integration phases depends on how well leaders communicate. People are not naive and will know when leaders are withholding information. We need to understand how each phase will affect our industry and be honest with those who will be impacted. Leaders should acknowledge the replacement phase while focusing on the creation phase. When we trust in our employees’ wisdom and adaptability, they are more likely to join us on this journey.

Of course, driving the creation phase simultaneously with augmentation and replacement is a bit of a paradox. We need a bigger-picture view even though we do not yet know what that will look like.

The creation phase will spur new jobs in industries yet to exist. Rushing to join the herd and using AI for picking off low-hanging fruit could end up slowing down the process. Instead, leaders should intentionally choose use cases where they can accelerate the augmentation, replacement, and creation phases as much as possible for a more forward-thinking strategy.

The way forward

Despite historical patterns around technology adoption, we must concede that AI is different. The unpredictability of machine intelligence that can and does learn has raised the stakes. It requires a balanced approach.

If AI is the first technology that learns, my philosophy is to treat AI like a child, with care and responsibility. Just as we would never write off a child’s future because of an outburst or tantrum, the same goes for AI. Bias, hallucinations, and a lack of explainability can become teachable moments. As teachers, there is a place for regulation, but not so much that it represses our ability to creatively leverage its applications. We can remain agile, respond to issues as they arise, and adjust our approach accordingly.

Not only should we embrace AI’s creation phase, but we also need to democratize it. With the code and algorithms accessible to the public, open-source AI can lead more quickly to more robust and ethical AI solutions. It encourages developers and researchers from all over the world to contribute their expertise and ideas with a diverse pool of talent and perspectives, making us more likely to discover the potential for AI and quantum computing to tackle some of humanity’s most pressing issues—climate change, global poverty, and disease. Unlike proprietary or black box solutions that would concentrate such power in the hands of a few and open it to abuse, open source AI lets us tap into its full potential.

The choice is ours

AI will not save us, but neither will it destroy us—its fate lies in our choices.

With enlightened leadership, even the positive potential of nuclear energy can outweigh the negatives. Rather than amplifying the fatalistic voices of the doomsayers, we should be focusing on how to make AI an asset for humanity. Be optimistic and use the power of our intentionality to direct a better course and create new value for humanity.

The future of AI has not yet been written. We may not know what that will look like, but if we can dream it, the possibilities are infinite.

Nabil Bukhari is chief technology and product officer, EVP/GM subscription business, at Extreme Networks.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91157364/responsible-leadership-is-needed-to-harness-the-power-of-ai?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss