Would you ask a medical trainee to do her first surgery on someone’s heart or brain?
Would you ask a pilot to fly a loaded 747 on his first flight?
No?
Then why do we want to take our core processes and automate them with AI from the outset? Shouldn’t we be more circumspect in our approach? Certainly, for most organizations the issue is not life and death, but the metaphor still stands. Our approach to AI has been rash, driven mostly by hype and PR and not by maturity or knowledge of how complex organizations really function.
The technology world is abuzz with talk of “disruption.” Yet, for IT teams – which are charged with business continuity- the term disruption is anathema. After all, as we seek to transform and modernize organizations (and their products, services, processes, and culture), we are not ever given the mandate to stop everything and retool. Thus, for IT there is the delicate dance of continuity amidst disruption, of ensuring that things work even as we look to replace and refine.
With AI, executives have asked IT (and other teams) to live up to its hype, but in a decontextualized context in which the complexity of existing systems and processes is often ignored. And we have seen countless issues arise- from broken systems to AI agents that spout incorrect (or worse, non-compliant) messages. We have seen customer-facing experiences fail, company operations shudder, and speed mismatch develop between technological progress and the corporate culture which must avail itself of and benefit from this progress.
This is a function of both mimicry and hubris. Companies’ PR claims about the “transformational” power of AI products and services should not be our benchmark for reality. AI cannot be adopted in a vacuum or as part of a star-chamber discussion that does not involve teams that have to implement it, both internally and in outward-facing systems. Just because an executive believes that “someone else” is doing it, does not mean that his or her company is yet ready to do the same.
With AI, as with all else, haste makes waste. Circumspection and tire-kicking are necessary parts of the journey.