Apologies in advance, but I just attended a panel on businesses using AI, and need to vent.
This is a good kind of vent, because knowing that other companies are doing AI so poorly – it gives our community a decent head start over our competitors.
Here’s why they’re faring so poorly:
They’re stuck in risk paralysis, because their AI projects are too large at the start. The gears of innovation grind slower with big projects; instead, start small with a skill or micro-app to prove (or disprove) business value quickly.
They’re mired in AI governance, so they move even slower than their employees. It’s these employees who are launching rogue projects without rules. So you now have emerging shadow AI that governance was supposed to prevent in the first place.
As Alex advocates for in Capability Equity, it’s easier to build governance from the bottom up, starting with the front-line people actually living the work experience. How can you govern an AI-enabled workflow if you haven’t first defined what the workflow is supposed to be?
They’re stuck in shotgun AI, spraying AI across a company’s workforce without a cohesive, prioritized game plan.
It’s like throwing a bunch of seeds on a plot of soil, and expecting a beautiful garden to magically sprout.
But the worst take? All these experts led the discussion with AI and data at the center of the business conversation. All of them ignored that the real center of your business is how employees actually work (and want to work) as well as what’s most important: Building Runnable IP as a set of capabilities that set your company apart from the rest.
Instead, the panel of experts prioritized the process of AI implementation, rather than the process of delivering capabilities to their workforce and customers.
As long as competitors keep thinking this way, our community will stay ahead of the game.
Thanks for letting me vent, and thanks for being a part of our community.
Nelson Taruc is an AI Implementation Architect at AIWhy.