“If technology is distinguishable from magic, it is insufficiently advanced”

Corollary of Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law as expressed in the novel “Foundation’s Fear”.

As noted in a recent article from McKinsey “The state of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s breakout year”, a significant number of organisations are already using generative artificial intelligence (AI) in at least one business function.

Some aspects of adopting AI successfully – such as clearly defining the business context and benefits, incorporating human centred design and carefully considering people change impacts – don’t appear to be very different to those involved in deploying other information technology capabilities.

However, there are some important differences including the speed at which AI capabilities are advancing, the broad range of possible applications and impacts, the potential lack of observability and ethical/legal concerns. The following resources feature some world renown experts sharing their thoughts on the implications of AI:

• On Masters of Scale, “Prepare for where AI is heading”, Reid Hoffman joins Bob Safian to explore how leaders everywhere should prepare for the AI revolution.
• On Freaknomics Radio, “Satya Nadella’s intelligence is not artificial”, Satya Nadella speak about the perils and blessings of AI. This show has also just released an excellent three part series on AI (episodes 554, 555 & 556).
• On Guy Raz’s How I Built This, Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, discusses how their new AI tool, Khanmigo, could reshape the future of the classroom.

The recently published Australian Federal Government interim guidance on using publicly available generative AI platforms also provides some useful guidelines for managing the use of AI.