The Business Use of AI

Your competitors are using AI to analyze sales, what do you do? Organizations today are very enamored with artificial intelligence capabilities to find hidden patterns and tease out issues in data and text. Each organization is trying to find an advantage over its competitors. This explosion of interest in AI poses a challenge to managers for effectively make sense of and use AI effectively. The most nimble and adaptable companies and executives will thrive. Organizations that can rapidly sense and respond to opportunities will seize the advantage in the AI-enabled landscape (Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew Mcafee, HBR,).

Understanding, organizing, integrating and delivering AI is a key issue today. Business must be clear about the use and value of AI to avoid chasing an unachievable and expensive dream. AI carries with it many implications. Jobs change dramatically, current skill become obsolete and displaced, there may exist resistance to change and unrealistic fear of robots taking over as well as other aspects of automation. This was true when automation hit the factory floor in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Union issues may pale by comparison with white-collar response.

Today pictures of auto assembly and other manufacturing plants show few workers. What detail work remains is slowly but surely giving way to automation. However, the positive side promises better paying work, newer and more interesting tasks and less physically demanding and boring operations. Managers and professionals should prepare for the coming changes. What happens when AI becomes part of the work process? What can we expect from AI capabilities today? What may happen in the future? Answers for these and other questions are part of the value of this course.