AI: The Even Bigger Bang Part 2: Evidence & Ways Forward
AI: Evidence of Disruption
If you’re still unconvinced whether AI is that big of a deal…
Over the last three months social scientists from Harvard, MIT & The Warwick Business School have been conducting multiple experiments and hundreds of interviews with 758 consultants from the Boston Consulting Group.
Eighteen different types of task were selected, each to be a realistic sample of the kinds of work done within an elite consulting company with a revenue of $11.2 Billion.
The bottom line is that the consultants using ChatGPT-4 outperformed those who didn’t on every dimension in every single way of measuring performance.
The ones using AI on average finished 12.2% more tasks, completed those tasks 25.1% more quickly, and produced 40% higher quality results than those who were not using AI.
Noteworthy was just how much AI acted as a skill leveller.
Those consultants who scored the worst when assessed at the start of the experiments had a 43% jump in performance, when they got to use AI. The top consultants still got a boost, but less so.
Consider what it could mean when potentially all your workers suddenly become top tier performers?
Perhaps in the same way weavers were once judged good or bad on how deftly they could weave until the Spinning Jenny was invented and made those differences moot.
And still no one yet knows the full range of what AI can do. No one knows the best ways to use it and no one knows the conditions under which it fails to perform. There is no instruction book. On some things AI is immensely powerful, on others it sucks. But, unless you use AI a lot, you simply can’t know which is which.
This does mean AI is still some way from replacing all human intervention, which is fine because we’ve survived as a species knowing the necessity of keeping some kind of eye on the ball or hand on the tiller as we like unpredictable things not to go entirely unsupervised; sheep, crowds, children etc. We instinctively know letting going completely is not wise and we should continue to trust in these types of instincts which AI does not have.
But it is also all the more reason for us to have a hand on that tiller. We are in the midst of this new Big Bang and the question is no longer is AI going to change the way we work and do business, the question is what do we want those profound changes to look like?
So, Where to now, Captain?
As mentioned previously one way to react to AI is to keep your ship nicely tucked up safe and sound in harbour, yes it will be safe but that’s not what ships are for.
To stretch this metaphor in the current much disputed waters of AI, one way you could react is to adopt a sort of Privateer mind set; half pirate half authorised venturer.
At least until some kind of order is imposed and the Union Jack flies from every port.
But for now the helm is absolutely yours and yours alone.
Like all adventures first you are going to need a plan and the temptation will be to go off and look up AI Planning experts. My advice is: Don’t.
We’re still right at the very beginning of this Bigger Bang which means we are still in the huge un-chartered waters of a brand-new disruptive technology. That means nobody really knows too much about the best ways to use it, but what they certainly don’t know is the best ways for your own business to use it. You do need some guidance but not the traditional type.
At some point you will need to simply head out into open water but first it is probably a good idea to get someone like me in to show you basic AI map & compass skills and perhaps give your crew a few swimming lessons - or at least some how-not-to-drown lessons.
But your overall aim is still to get under sail and start actually exploring. Only then can you hope to figure just what exactly is out there for you and your business.
Something worth remembering is that even the scientists and engineers who have designed & implemented AI itself , as smart as they are, have no greater expertise on how AI can best be used, or even how and when it should be used.
So, here I stress be wary of being offered ‘old wine in new bottles’, there will no doubt be a proliferation of expertise offering businesses what will turn out to be solutions to old style problems that have been repackaged and repurposed as AI solutions.
On the other hand be equally wary of anyone claiming that someone with total expertise of AI itself is what you need. As an example here’s the basic skill tree for an AI Machine Learning expert, Machine Learning or ML is a core principle of AI.
Now, I’m nerdy enough have a core understanding of most of the above but that’s because I have to in order to translate it into plain English for normal people who have better things to do than live and breathe the technical aspects of AI.
But, be honest would it be likely that someone with such an in depth expertise of ML would be best placed for recognising the particular needs of your business or the issues your sector faces?
Absolute experts are not going to be of best use, nor are those who present you with perfectly good but old wine in new bottles.
At this stage what you’re looking for is someone who’s AI confident but with enough self-awareness to know they don’t know all the answers but does know where best to look for them.
Perhaps someone who seems to be able to communicate the genuine strangeness and power of AI but remains grounded in the reality of the needs for small and medium sized businesses.
And if you’re still trying to figure out who that might possibly be I’m demanding a complete refund from that charm school I signed up for.
Ultimately you are the one who must make the decisions around AI and its place in your business. I can offer you help, guidance and ideas but they say’ to govern is to choose’ and the AI tide is ever rising and the time to make those choices is now.
If this has struck a suitable chord then may I remind you I offer a free half hour exploratory call where you can discuss anything at all around AI and its implications for you and your business. Click the button to book.