Leading in a World Where AI Wields Power of Its Own

Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 331

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since September 2017 | Week 331 | January  12-18, 2024

Leading & Managing Section | 1

Leading in a World Where AI Wields Power of Its Own

By Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms | Harvard Business Review Magazine | Jan-Feb, 2024 Issue

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The wheel, the steam engine, the personal computer: Throughout history, technologies have been our tools. Whether used to create or destroy, they have always been under human control, behaving in predictable and rule-based ways. This assumption is unraveling. A new generation of AI systems are no longer merely our tools—they are becoming actors in and of themselves, participants in our lives, behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes.  This article is about how to conceptualize and navigate a new world in which we now live and work alongside these actors. Sometimes our colleagues, sometimes our competitors, sometimes our bosses, sometimes our employees. And always embedding themselves, advance by advance, toward ubiquity.

Think of them instead as autosapiens. “Auto” in that they are able to act autonomously, make decisions, learn from experience, adapt to new situations, and operate without continuous human intervention or supervision. “Sapiens” in that they possess a type of wisdom—a broad capacity to make complex judgments in context—that can rival that of humans and in many ways outstrip it.

Although they are still nascent, autosapient systems display four key characteristics. They are agentic (they act), adaptive (they learn), amiable (they befriend), and arcane (they mystify). These characteristics help us understand the right way to approach them and how and why they are set to wield increasing power. 

Autosapience will redefine core dimensions of our everyday lives, economies, and societies, just as the shift from old power to new power has done over the past two decades. Understanding how power will work on a macro level is essential for leaders, in whose organizations many of the shifts will play out.  This will have implications for how ideas and information flow, how expertise works, how value is created, how governance works, and how we interact with technology.

The rise of autosapience will open up major new opportunities. To seize them, leaders will need to embrace new skills and approaches. These will include managing the effects of autosapient systems in the workplace, looking for increased value in that which is uniquely human, and aligning messaging and business practices with a changing, and challenging, debate.

The future of these technologies is far too important to be left to the technologists alone. To match the power of autosapient systems and their owners, we will need an unprecedented alliance of policymakers, corporate leaders, activists, and consumers with the clarity and confidence to lead and not be led. For all the wizardry and seductions of this new world, our future can still be in our own hands.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Throughout history, technologies have been our tools. Whether used to create or destroy, they have always been under human control, behaving in predictable and rule-based ways. This assumption is unraveling. A new generation of AI systems are no longer merely our tools—they are becoming actors in and of themselves, participants in our lives, behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes – referred as autosapients.
2. Although they are still nascent, autosapient systems display four key characteristics. They are agentic (they act), adaptive (they learn), amiable (they befriend), and arcane (they mystify). These characteristics help us understand the right way to approach them and how and why they are set to wield increasing power. 
3. To match the power of autosapient systems and their owners, we will need an unprecedented alliance of policymakers, corporate leaders, activists, and consumers with the clarity and confidence to lead and not be led.

Full Article

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Topics: Technology & Humans, Artificial Intelligence