AI Is Moving So Fast, When Do We Jump On Board?

By Simon Kriss, Chief Innovation Officer for the CX Innovation Institute, author of “The AI Empowered Customer Experience” and CX Sessions podcast host

In 1961, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley wrote a wonderful musical titled “Stop the world – I want to get off”. Although it debuted in Manchester, the show quickly moved to London’s West End and then New York’s Broadway. The musical was also made into a film by Warner Bros in 1966 and was reproduced for TV by the A&E Network 30 years later.

It is believed that the title came from some 1950’s graffiti, and the sentiment is as true today as it was back then.

In the original musical, every time something bad happened to the protagonist, he would yell out “Stop the world” and then address the audience. How fitting for the modern world of Generative AI.

For anyone watching the incredible leaps forward in Generative AI across the last 12 months, it can appear extremely daunting. Just one example is OpenAI. Although it took them several years to develop GPT2 and GPT3, since releasing GPT3.5 (in the form of ChatGPT) to the world just 12 months ago, they have released GPT4, and now GPT4 Turbo!

THE QUANDARY OF SPEED

In my book “The AI Empowered Customer Experience”, I talk about a two-sided risk around AI adoption, FOMO (fear of missing out) and FOMF (fear of moving forward). FOMF is often driven by the speed with which AI is developing and changing.

The world of AI does not stop for even a minute, let alone for enough time to allow organisations to gather their thoughts and commence their due diligence in a stable marketplace.

All of this leaves many organisations adopting a “let’s wait until the dust settles a bit before we leap in” mentality. If your organisation is one of these, I have some very sad news… The dust is not going to settle for a long time. A very long time.

WHERE TO THEN?

As I have shared previously, AI is empirical. Organisations cannot study or research their way through it, they must kick off their shoes and step into the water. AI use begets AI use.

The above statement is deeply concerning for many organisations, especially those whose culture is risk adversity or those who do not tolerate failure well. However, stepping into AI in a controlled way can and will be deeply rewarding for those involved and the organisation as a whole.

Here are some top tips for getting started:

• Don’t wait for the dust to settle, make a conscious decision to start now.
• Educate yourself as much as possible on AI and it’s uses and risks.
• Form a small team of AI enthusiasts and break them free of the normal hierarchy/reporting of the wider organisation.
• Don’t wait for your core technology vendors to market their AI products, jump in with a start up if needed and get some empirical experience happening (even if this means you throw it away later).
• Don’t abdicate control of AI to the technology team. Most AI systems require very little inhouse tech support, the driver needs to come from the business.