Ej Qua Hiansen l July 14, 2023 l The Manila Times
GENERATIVE artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the buzz phrase du jour in the business community. Over the last month, I have attended a few talks organized by Finex and Makati Business Club on the topic, and the recurring questions that pop up revolve around how businesses can use this technology, how we can evolve to take advantage of it and on the governance aspect.
What is generative AI? In layman’s terms, it is AI that can create new content. I witnessed a friend using this technology on Adobe Photoshop where he could quickly change a subject’s age and race to better match the story he was sharing. The example that we hear of a lot is ChatGPT which people have used to pass Bar exams, draft speeches and prepare presentations. I have also used an app to create a travel itinerary. It seems like the possibilities are endless.
While AI is new, technological innovation is not. The economist, Joseph Schumpter, developed a theory that business cycles operate under long waves of innovation beginning with the Industrial Revolution as the first wave. He further posited that key industries would have a greater impact on the economy due to what he called “creative disruption” and as a result, businesses have to adapt or be left behind. More recent studies by the Edelson Institute and Detlef Reis show that we are currently in the sixth wave of innovation which is focused on digitization and clean tech. What is interesting is that each of these innovation cycles is becoming shorter than the previous cycle demonstrating that as technology is advancing, we have to adapt even faster than previous generations. It is also likely that the next cycle will happen sooner than we expect.
How can we do this when it just seems like yesterday that we all shifted to holding online meetings instead of purely face-to-face meetings? The answer lies in a popular meme that I’ve been seeing about the Answer. When basketball fans hear AI, they often think of Allen Iverson who was also nicknamed the Answer. Iverson is a former NBA MVP who was also a cultural icon. He was most known as a scorer for the Philadelphia 76ers, but when he played in All Star teams or for the US Basketball team, he became more of a facilitator because he had many talented teammates that could also score the basketball. With the 76ers, his teammates were best considered as role players who would do the unglamorous work allowing him to focus on generating offense. Culturally, many believe that the NBA instituted a dress code because of him.
Relating this back to business, we need to ask ourselves, what do we need technology to do? What capabilities does our organization currently have and what capabilities does it need? We need to keep an open mindset and challenge continuing to do things the way that they have always been done. AI can play the role that we ask of it, but we also have to adapt to play the right positions around it.
A recent study by Goldman Sachs said that generative AI could raise global GDP (gross domestic product) by 7 percent but also that as much as 300 million jobs can be lost to automation and that approximately two-thirds of US jobs will be impacted in some way by automation. However, the study also cited a report by David Autor that 60 percent of today’s workers are employed in jobs that were non-existent as recently as the 1940s suggesting that most employment growth has been driven by new jobs created as a result of technology.
Technology provides a great opportunity to increase productivity, but only if used the right way, only if we give it the right prompts and ask the right questions, and only if we adapt. At the end of the day, technology is what we make of it. It can be the answer, but it can also be the question.