Are You Ready for Generative AI?
3 questions as you develop strategic use of artificial intelligence in your business
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is taking off as a technology full of promise. Rapid recent advances are helping more people to use AI for more purposes, and AI tools are providing significantly more power to their users. AI tools allow you to generate, organize, or analyze text, images, sounds, video, quantitative data, and more, with little effort and often little tech expertise. AI can augment many aspects of your business, by assisting you with customer service or support, by providing new ways to carry out research and analyze data, and by enhancing your marketing capabilities.
It’s exciting to see Latino businesses leading the way with AI adoption. A recent report from the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative found that 17% of tech-centric Latino-owned businesses have implemented AI technologies, ahead of tech-centric White-owned businesses (15% implementation) and non-tech-centric Latino-owned businesses (4% implementation). For businesses generating $1M or more in annual revenue, those which are Latino-owned are more likely (14%) to be aware and have implemented AI than White-owned businesses (7%). The fact is that you don’t have to have a tech-centric business to explore AI adoption, if you are to reap the benefits that the Stanford report identifies for AI-adopter businesses, which include improved operations efficiency, enhanced customer experience, and even increased revenues.
As you explore whether you’re ready for generative AI, here are three questions to help you get started.
1. How can AI contribute to achieving your business goals?
Your organization’s mission and your business objectives need to be the drivers of any tech adoption. This applies even more to AI technologies, since scaled business uses are still relatively immature. Draw up an estimate of the return on investment you would expect and think about how you’ll evaluate an AI project to meet your business objectives.
Consider the kind of data (or text, or images, etc.) your organization generates and how that is already organized and presented to internal or external stakeholders. AI might help you organize or present this information in ways that might save you time. For example, a chatbot will make it easier for customers to query information about your company using natural language, but you’ll have to invest time and resources into collecting that information, ensuring its accuracy, figuring out how you’ll keep it up to date, and testing the chatbot’s performance to make sure it’s effective at answering the range of questions your customers may have.
2. What kinds of concerns should I be considering even before adoption?
As you consider adoption of an AI platform or tool, you’ll want to examine what data protection regulations you’ll need to comply with, and how you’ll safeguard your data. You’ll also need to ensure transparency with your stakeholders. For example, some companies tag AI-generated text or images with a disclaimer. Other organizations ensure there is human oversight of all AI-generated content. Remember too that any content or analysis generated by AI could have errors and hallucinations. Also be skeptical of platforms that over-promise what AI can do for you.
3. How do I get the necessary skills?
As with any new technology, AI requires training and investment. Luckily, there are many available resources, so you won’t need to start from scratch. Still, the sooner you realize that you have to upskill, the better, because some basic training will be necessary for you to determine what tools you’ll need to acquire, what skills you’ll need to hone, or what skilled personnel you’ll need to recruit.
Basic training is available from platforms like Coursera, edX, Udacity, and LinkedIn Learning. More specialized training will depend on the platform you’re aiming to use and the extent to which you’re planning to customize it to your needs.
Some final words of advice
There is no right or wrong answer to any of these questions: all depends on your business needs and objectives, your available resources, and your organization’s current state of tech proficiency.
Don’t be shy about embracing a learning and experimental mindset: AI is changing rapidly and what’s cutting edge today may be very outdated tomorrow, so be prepared to learn, unlearn, and re-learn, every step of the way.
Lastly, whatever you do, always put the humans at the center: humans need to drive AI adoption, humans need to ensure transparency and ethical use, humans need to acquire the expertise to design and run AI. Putting yourself and your employees at the center of AI adoption will be key to your success.
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