How Critical Are People During the Generative AI Revolution?
6 min readRecent, fast advancements in generative AI or artificial intelligence bring back the discussion about “human vs. machine.” While most experts in the field predict collaboration over opposition, generative AI has the potential to profoundly change your business and your people’s way of working.
As technology shifts the goal posts, focusing on people and equipping them to thrive in a fast-changing environment is more important than before. Even with intelligent machines, technology is just one part of the story, providing you with infrastructure and tools. Meanwhile, your people remain the key to delivering the desired results and sustainable, long-term success.
What does this new era of generative AI mean for your business? What questions must you and other business leaders ask, right now? How can SoftServe’s Change Management Practice help you successfully navigate through this massive change?
Read on to find out.
ERA OF GENERATIVE AI
In late 2022, the chatbot ChatGPT triggered a head-spinning wave of developments in the AI space. More specifically, around generative AI, a category of artificial intelligence algorithms trained on data to generate original inputs in the form of text, images, video, and audio.
What followed was a flood of generative AI advancements. Consider:
The list can go on and on.
WHAT DOES GENERATIVE AI MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
The short answer is change.
While you still wrap your head around the post-pandemic digital transformation of the workspace, a much larger change is about to happen.
It looks like the powers of generative AI will be part of the business applications you use every day. Much sooner than anyone thought, you may be able to ask AI to complete all sorts of demands, such as:
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Deal with mundane, but time-consuming tasks like summarizing a PDF, drafting a report or an article, reviewing long email threads, and writing email replies and notes about meetings. |
Act on much more creative requests like designing presentations and conjuring up out-of-thin-air images, audio, and video. |
Analyze vast amounts of business-specific data and help you make strategic business decisions. |
With big and small players out to reinvent their products, the use of generative AI may become the norm sooner than expected.
This means the way you operate your business, and the way your people work will significantly change. AI strategy is no longer just the domain of technology organizations. As the futurist Bernard Marr points out, now every company must think of itself as a tech business and humans must learn to collaborate with intelligent machines.
Your business may have no choice but to jump onto the generative AI trend and quickly adapt to stay competitive. Your people may not lose their jobs to AI, but their jobs will certainly change.
WHAT DECIDES YOUR SUCCESS WITH GENERATIVE AI?
While the world is warned about the ethical concerns and potential threats of generative AI — those that we need to examine and carefully manage, there’s potential for positive change.
Generative AI can deliver a massive boost to your productivity, innovation, discovery of new opportunities, and, ultimately, business profitability.
What will make all the difference between successful businesses and those who are left behind is an efficient change management strategy. This includes a cross-functional approach, stakeholder alignment, operating model adaptation, planning, risk assessment, process optimization, and continuous improvement.
Most importantly, this is a huge change for your employees. To realize the benefits of generative AI, you first need to support them to buy into the new ways of working and quickly adapt.
QUESTIONS YOU, AS A BUSINESS LEADER, MUST WORK ON, RIGHT NOW
Another key to your success is to ask the right questions. This will help you and your teams work on the right priorities to manage changes. Right now, some of the questions to ask are:
- What are the desired outcomes you want to achieve by using generative AI? How are they aligned with your long-term business goals and key initiatives?
- What are the changes, impacts, and risks to your people, processes, and technologies that generative AI will trigger for your organization?
- How do you use generative AI to create efficiencies? What are the best ways to reinvest your potential cost savings with maximum ROI?
- What are the new skills and capabilities you must reinforce in the new world of work for both tech and non-tech roles?
- How do you get your people to buy-in? How do you achieve a culture of continuous learning that’s required from fast-moving technology developments?
Conclusion
SoftServe, a trusted technology partner, helps organizations find the answers to these questions and others and guides you through the technological and human side of change in your business. SoftServe is uniquely positioned to provide an end-to-end business solution — from the selection and implementation of the right technology to the delivery of your desired business outcomes.
Discover how SoftServe’s Change Management Practice can help you navigate the ongoing change by aligning your people with new processes and technologies that drive adoption and maximize ROI.