Are You Ready For Leading And Sustaining AI Responsibly? (#1)

Expect a rapid series of legislative changes to accelerate with Artificial Intelligence (AI) concerns. This is a twenty part blog series designed to help educate board directors and C-Suite leaders on what it will take for you to get prepared for designing, building and sustaining an AI Competency Center in your organization and ensure you are AI Ready on governance matters.

Let’s first firmly establish that there is no question that AI is going to underpin everything as we know it. AI will transform industries, business models, products and services and literally impact every aspect of human life, as we know it.

Mankind has experienced many innovations through the centuries that have disrupted how work is done, but there has never been a technological change so rapid and transformative in the history of mankind.

Just look at the meteoric growth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT which hit one million users mark in just five days, according to company CEO Sam Altman. Other innovations we are more familiar with like Netflix took over 3.5 years to amass 1 million users. If we go back further in time, to electricity although discovered in the mid 1800’s, the actual diffusion took over a century, and even today you may be surprized to discover that over 16% of the global population, about an estimated 1.2 billion people are still living without this basic necessity.

This sharp comparison, reinforces that we are living in an age where technology disruptions, most certainly laced with AI will continue to create titan megatrons and that we have a serious gap of ensuring all humans have their basic needs met.

Its not just the shere volume of growth of users, it is most acutely reflected in the market’s valuation dynamics. OpenAI’s valuation is already estimated that it could rise threefold to somewhere between $80B and $90B, making the AI start-up behind ChatGPT more expensive than publicly traded AI plays such as Microsoft, Alphabet, and Nvidia.

Does this make any sense? Sounds like the wild west to me.

While OpenAI’s growth dynamic is going on the other technology titans Google nor Amazon are sitting on their laurels. Recently Google announced a $2B investment in Anthropic, a rival to OpenAI, as well Amazon has committed to invest $4B, to help Dario Amodei CEO and Co-Founder, build a next generation model called “Claude-Next.” An interesting factoid is Dario Amodei quit his job at OpenAI because he wanted to build a more trusted model from the ground up and in 2021, he founded Anthropic with his sister Daniela and other former employees of OpenAI.

Amidst this backdrop, some unusual decisions on leadership decision making on responsible AI wipeouts. Most recently, Microsoft laid off their AI Ethics Team in a recent round of layoffs of their 10,000 employees. This decisions has me as an AI Ethicist wonder why this happened? Although Microsoft has retained its commitment to AI, how are they going to ensure that the deeper inspection practices are front and center in all their products. Insiders say this sends out a mixed market signal as the company accelerates its integration of OpenAI into its core product offerings. I would have to agree.

The reason I am highlighting this context is to highlight how significant this change dynamic is, how fast this transformation is already underway, and reinforce how AI will impact all employee’s digital literacy needs. In addition, board directors and leaders will have a major responsibility to approach AI innovations with a cyber security acute eye like a tiger to balance the excitement and manage the risks as AI hackers have just increased their prowess with AI.

Getting underway to tackle the needs for designing, building and sustaining an AI Competency Center will be needed for all organization’s – irrespective of size, industry, public or private – as to stay relevant this is not an option. In addition, the regulatory environment is clamping down harder to ensure responsible and trusted AI practices are diffused into society in a balanced manner.

This next blog in this series will start to unpack perspectives on governance and specifically discuss the role of a board director in relationship to AI and identify key leadership questions that you need to know the answers to to manage risk.