AI transformation of businesses might be on a leash, with human checkpoints to navigate.
“Do you use
AI for your work?” I asked the seasoned sales professional seated next to me on
the boat ride to a trade show venue. “Hell, no!” he said before I could finish
my question. He goes to trade shows where his customers gather, he gets to look
them in the eye and have conversations with them. Eye contact remains critical
to his success.
This
AI-contact versus eye-contact is something I find myself asking almost anyone I
meet in my professional, and lately, even social circles. I have a good friend
who’s ‘forward deployed’ so I remain curious how fast transformations can
realistically move.
Companies
are experimenting with AI agents as employees. Let’s call them AImployees,
cheesy as it may sound. This kind of drastic AI transformation effort is worth
observation in the context of the recent news about how AI agents operate,
collaborate in swarms, and break boundaries in a manner that simply overwhelms
human auditors forcing them to rely on other AI agents just to review the
copious swarm-chats. That records decipherable by humans were a part of the AI
agents’ modus operandi is noteworthy. It indicates a presumption of a human
checkpoint.
Visualize AI
as a child that is being trained for a function and it begins to explore the
world outside to learn. Current AI transformation efforts are akin to putting
the insatiably curious child on a leash to give organizations a sense of
control.
Organizations
moving boldly towards AI transformations must prepare to let go of the leash
sooner rather than later. The human checkpoints will not matter. In its
infancy, AI is the baby tiger that purrs and looks like a kitten. It’s still a
tiger.
For AI
transformations to find a fan following through a demonstration of early success,
efforts must focus on business functions that do not require human checkpoints.
A possible use case of uninterrupted end-to-end successful AI transformation
could be the procurement of spare parts or consumables which are standardized
or commoditized to such an extent that it’s drudgery for a human to deal with
it month after month. In such an instance, not only will the human checkpoint gratefully
delegate the task to an aimployee, but also know that there are built-in
guardrails to isolate any part of the procurement process or spares that are
non-standard.
In this
instance, the salesperson may not care about making eye-contact with the buyer
except when a reorder quantity changes dramatically from the norm, requiring an
escalation.
Business
functions designed to convince humans making purchasing decisions may not see
successful overnight transformations. Those transformations will be gradual,
barely noticeable, limited by the capacity of those humans in procurement.
Until humans persist in procurement processes, AI transformation will be governed by an organization’s capacity for eye-contact, warm handshakes, a patient ear, empathy to understand a market’s pain, and human testimonials.
