Foreword

What should leaders of organisations believe about artificial intelligence? Are we in entirely new and uncharted territory with regard to this technology? Will it totally transform business, organisations and life as we know it? Will vast numbers of humans be out of work because of it? Will highly intelligent machines dominate less intelligent humans?

You would be forgiven if you believed that these hype-laden questions are either entirely correct or entirely wrong. There are elements of truth within each of them, but also substantial exaggeration. But it’s likely that the employees of your organisations are taking these questions seriously, and they need your help in addressing them.

AI has, of course, been around for more than half a century, so it shouldn’t be viewed as entirely new. But its velocity and visibility have changed dramatically over the last few years since ChatGPT became broadly available in November 2022.

Generative AI got everyone’s attention because of its (apparent) intelligence, its ability to converse easily with us, and its seemingly effortless content creation. But there have been other technologies that have dramatically changed society and human work—fire, steam engines, electricity, computers, the Internet, etc. We’re not in entirely uncharted territory with this new technology. We know that it generally takes a while for people and organisations to adopt it and use it effectively. We know that its successful use requires leadership and change management. We know that it takes too long for governments to produce effective regulation of technologies, so leaders of companies and non-governmental organisations have to find their own way ethically.

The most prominent thing we’ve learnt from past technologies is surely relevant to AI and at the core of this book. It’s the idea that the highest and best use of the technology will be helping humans become more productive and effective. That’s the idea behind the ‘dual intelligence’ concept that’s laid out further in this book. The goal of any leader should be to learn how to extract the most value out of smart machines and smart humans working collaboratively.

If you are looking at AI as a vehicle for automating jobs and getting rid of lots of your employees, you’re looking in the wrong place. You may succeed in the short run at reducing your costs, but your competitors will be doing the same thing. You’ll be in a race to the bottom. Much better to combine the intelligence and speed of AI with the creativity and innovation of human workers.

From this book I hope you learn that humans and leadership are critical to success with AI, and that it is part of your job as a leader to persuade employees that they have valuable skills in an AI-centric world and to help them cultivate them. It’s not an easy thing to determine exactly what the correct human roles will be in an AI collaboration, so your people will need all the encouragement and help you can provide.

Thomas H. Davenport
Distinguished Professor, Babson College and Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
Author or co-author of seven books on AI, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller All In on AI