Q&A: Businesses need to be the boss of AI, or else

As with any revolutionary technology, artificial intelligence (AI) is viewed with both optimism and fear. 

The optimistic outlook posits that AI is our virtual assistant, taking care of mundane, task-oriented activities so we have time to conjure up new business ideas. On the other hand, the fearful outlook paints a dystopian picture where robots take over society and AI replaces all our jobs.

While there’s a case to be made for both sides, Anat Baron – the brand builder, futurist, and CEO of Stashwall Inc. – believes that for businesses and people to thrive (and even survive) they must leave fear behind and approach AI as an opportunity to improve human potential.

With FutureIT Los Angeles coming up on March 12, we spoke with Baron – a keynote speaker at the event – about how AI, robotics, and communication technologies are redefining how people interact and businesses operate.

Read on for Baron’s thoughts on navigating a human-plus-machine world. 

How do you foresee the relationship between AI, robotics, and human interaction evolving in the coming years, and what are the implications for businesses?

How AI integrates into business and culture depends on us. Instead of being scared of machines, we have an incredible opportunity to use machines to augment humans. I prefer calling it augmented intelligence instead of artificial intelligence because if you think about it as augmenting us as humans, that’s a positive thing. 

What generative AI does best is alleviate the busy work that burns people out. Do we really need to be filling out Excel spreadsheets? How great is it to have repetitive tasks taken over by a machine?

Does that mean AI will replace human workers? Maybe, eventually. If your job requires that you work like a robot, you’ll be replaced by a robot. People are going to have to be reskilled.

The best approach for businesses is to admit that machines make our lives better. Let’s allow AI to handle mundane tasks and let’s figure out, as humans, how to interact better with each other, grow our businesses, and nurture relationships with customers.

Can you provide an example of a company or use case that successfully navigates the balance between meeting customer needs with AI and maintaining human connection?

Netflix does a great job of utilizing AI and user data. It knows what I watched. It gives me options and recommendations. It gets to know me and communicates with me like a human. If I have a customer service issue, it addresses it quickly. It’s a frictionless experience that makes you feel special.

The most exciting AI use cases for me are in healthcare. AI can read X-rays way better than humans. In drug trials, AI data analysis predicts how patients respond to certain drugs and continually monitors patient data during clinical trials.

Can you discuss specific cases where a company failed to effectively implement AI in a way that maintained customer trust? What lessons can be learned?

No companies have really failed with generative AI – the type of AI everyone’s talking about – because it’s so new. 

But some recent examples of unregulated AI gone bad are: Cambridge Analytica using AI in 2016 to steal Facebook user data for political advertising; in 2018, a self-driving Uber car hit and killed a woman, creating a negative perception of autonomous vehicles. 

The big issue with AI right now is that it’s not regulated, so you see things like deep fakes of Taylor Swift before the Super Bowl. You’ll see more deep fakes during the election season. 

We don’t have a lot of guardrails for AI, so businesses and individuals need to always be aware of the dystopian aspects of AI, and technology in general. But there are ways to fend off the dark side and use AI for good.

What steps can businesses take to fend off the dark side and successfully integrate AI and robotics?

One way is to not just talk about innovation as an amorphous thing, but to actually want to innovate. 

This means investing time and money in AI R&D. With generative AI, we have a solution without any real use cases. Companies need to start using it for real. You may need to bring in new technology talent who aren’t afraid of AI and innovation. You may have to invest in reskilling people.

This idea that everyone will just have a job is probably not true. If I’m running a team of five people and I can run it with three, I’m going to run it with three. However, if I’m truly innovative, I’ll keep the five people and give task-oriented parts of their jobs to AI and have them spend more time on creative thinking and collaboration. The companies that do that will be more successful than the ones that just cut people.

Ultimately, we are the boss of AI. We cannot rely on AI to run our businesses for us! If we don’t set up AI to be subservient to us now, we could be in trouble.

Anat Baron will be the keynote speaker at FutureIT Los Angeles 2024 on March 12.