I have one simple ask before you read on. I’ve been nominated for the Thinkers360 Annual Awards and voting is open now. Click the image above to sign up using your LinkedIn account and vote in under 2 minutes. Step by step voting instructions are at the bottom of this post. I’d be genuinely grateful for your support. Thank you.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately researching and thinking about how artificial intelligence is going to impact leaders and organizations. Several clear trends have emerged, and over the coming weeks I will share my thoughts on them. The first deals with the most urgent topic.
The cost of gathering and analyzing information has dropped to almost zero.
Anyone with a laptop can access vast amounts of data and apply highly sophisticated analysis tools that used to require a significant investment of time, money, and effort. Those barriers are gone. What has not changed is the need to examine the output before you use it.
Let me give you an example.
Compiling a strategy report for a client used to take me an entire week. I spent hours doing market research, competitive analysis, reviewing survey answers and notes from interviews. Today I can complete all of that work in less than a full day. This gives me back time to do expanded research and run several additional analyses. In this capacity, AI is a wonderful research assistant, or as one of my friends terms it, an “Awesome Intern.” But like any intern, you have to check their work.
I ran into this issue during a client strategy project.
I had surveyed two groups using similar but not identical questionnaires. When I loaded the results into an AI tool it tried to create a uniform report and added “answers” to questions that I had not asked one of the groups. The result was an impressive analysis built on nonexistent data. It was only because of my decades of experience that I immediately noticed the inconsistencies. Someone without my background would likely have missed that.
Chip Conley, writing in Harvard Business Review, argues that AI is reducing the demand for human knowledge while raising the premium on wisdom. AI gathers information and produces outputs faster than any team could manage. Wisdom work is different. For more than 30 years I’ve been building these sort of reports. That is why I caught the error.
The technology is not the variable. The person using it is.
Ready to vote? Here’s how:
- Go to 👉 https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/annual_awards/voting & click Sign Up For Free in the top right corner
- Click Sign in with LinkedIn, log in, and enter the verification code sent to your email
- Click Allow to complete the sign in
- Dismiss the welcome message by clicking the X in the top right corner
- Find John Spence under Personal Excellence on the voting page and click Vote