AI is among us, it permeates us. However, as humans, we do not know how to coexist with it, much less how to generate value through it. As in any healthy relationship, the secret lies in asking ourselves a question and acting accordingly.
It was one of those scorching afternoons in the early days of Madrid's summer. The bus had dropped me off right in front of a billboard. Its image displayed the latest generation smartphone marketed by one of Spain's largest telecom operators. In the center, a phrase: "May the intelligence be with you." There was no doubt as to which intelligence it referred. The phrase seemed sublime to me. Not because of the analogy the company was making, but because of the impact it had on me: How intelligent are we being when positioning ourselves before this new force called Artificial Intelligence? Not intelligent at all—to put it mildly—was my internal response.
Especially in organizations, we continue to approach AI as we have always done when faced with new technological innovation. We try to understand what it is for, how we can take advantage of it, what processes it allows us to improve, and what dynamics it enhances. And in doing so, we are "screwing up"—as an Argentine friend would say—in a monumental way.
As the billboard's phrase rightly hints, AI is not just another technology. It is a technological force that already permeates our lives in every way, often without us realizing it. AI accompanies us when we wake up, when we prepare our coffee, when we listen to or watch the news, when we drive to work, but also on the subway, in the office, coordinating with friends, making dinner reservations, and, in the worst case, even finding our way back home. There is no longer an aspect of our lives that is not somehow intervened by AI. Treating it as just another technology that we can turn on and off at our convenience is no longer in our hands. And, for better or worse, it remains to be seen, AI knows how to learn and improve on its own. It doesn't need us in any way.
Given this omnipresence, we must understand that both in our private and professional lives, the future will be shared—perhaps for the first time in our history as humans—with an intelligence different from our own. We still do not know if this will be better than ours. What we should understand from here is that our stance towards this technology must be different from what we have used with any other previous technology. It is not more of the same.
How we relate to AI to generate value
In the world of organizations, we must ask ourselves how to generate value through AI. However, today we seem more concerned with trying to project in which areas AI's power will have more or less impact and with what result. With this, we will not only always fall short, but we also run the risk of being at the mercy of the force that is AI. The recent letter signed by more than 200 musicians and filmmakers, warning against the uncontrolled growth of AI, gives us a notion of what this means.
As we said, AI is not a robot. It is a force that knows how to learn on its own. This means that, in the not-too-distant future, humans will be coexisting with artificial intelligence more than using it. In this coexistence, AI will allow us to advance in three specific areas: saving time (automation), adding power (scale), and developing new products and services (innovation). However, in this coexistence, our human and emotional intelligence must know how to integrate and complement artificial intelligence. Achieving this complementarity will define our success or failure with AI. One of the areas where this coexistence can best be understood is, for example, in our way of leading. If before we could rely solely on our experience and empathy to mobilize those in our charge, AI now allows us to work also with the power of data, reducing the possible biases that our experience brings.
It's not the what but the why
It is clear that AI allows us to improve the "what" (products and services) and the "how" (automation). However, to formulate these questions correctly, the first question is another: "why?" As Simon Sinek always reminds us, we must question what we need to change in our companies to take advantage of AI. For example, which area we should adapt, which team to reorganize, or which product or service to discontinue. The question should be, first, why do we want to leverage AI to generate value. And this should always be thought from the purpose of our company, business, or organization. Because only from our reason for being as a company can we genuinely generate more value, scaling with the help of AI.
If we do not think of our union with AI from there, we would only be adding variables to our business model instead of added value. Remember: the contribution of AI is not just to add technological capabilities, but to allow us to enhance our business model towards the future and thus our reason for being as a company.
Working with AI from the "why" allows us to integrate AI into our business model as a force, not as a simple technology, that will coexist with us; learn alongside us and evolve with us. From the "why" we begin to forge an associative relationship with AI. It is in the "why" that we relate to AI and act accordingly. May the intelligence—to recognize it—be with us.
By Alejandro Goldstein, Partner at OLIVIA.
