Why are we so fixated on Artificial Intelligence?

This recent comment made by Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank created a storm of protest … "Replacing, in some cases lower value, human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital that we're putting in …"

Let’s deconstruct the implications of this in light of the fixation on Artificial Intelligence that currently fills our lives.

In nearly 50 years in business across the globe, the constant I’ve faced in organisation structure is that there are three core elements required for success:

·       Financial Capital

·       Infrastructure Capital

·       Human Capital

Or, more prosaically, Money, Material and People.

The key to successful organisations is, firstly, their ability to integrate these three elements effectively and, secondly, their ability to adapt these to a constantly and rapidly evolving environment.

When Winters used the term Human Capital, he failed to clarify the primary difference between it and the other two key elements - the ability to manipulate. In the trifecta of capital, only one - Human Capital - has the ability to manipulate the other two, to make decisions to direct the organisation towards improved performance, on-going success and long-term sustainability.

And so to Artificial Intelligence. Organisation leaders are agonising over it, as evidenced by Winters’ comment, and the angst comes directly from the use of a very simple verb, ”replacing”. By using this word, he played directly into the hands of those who see Artificial Intelligence as a threat to people, by reducing access to those jobs which, by one interpretation of his words, constituted low value. Instead, we should look at Artificial Intelligence not in terms of a threat to “replace” people, but to empower by providing all your staff with access to virtually limitless data and the means to rapidly analyse and calculate options arising from that data.

Only people have imagination, so instead of feeling threatened, imagine an environment where Artificial Intelligence frees up people to create alternatives and for everyone to grow and prosper as a result.

Cursus has been created to enable organisation leaders to facilitate the transition from imagination to practical application. To benefit from imaginative solutions the starting point is having complete clarity around precisely what the work looks like. Not jobs, not people specifications, but the work, and how that work comes together in individual workflows. From identifying the work, Cursus then examines what resources should be utilised to optimise delivery. An element will be AI, but Cursus views that as a potential resource for achieving effective organisational performance, not as demanding organisational change to accommodate the AI process.

© Bill Mitchell