AMIT KUMAR JAIN/SURBHI JAIN

The invention of steamengine way back in the17th century ushered inan era of machines re-

placing the muscle power of hu-man beings. The second machineage led by Artifi�cial Intelligence(AI) has the potential to replacehumans in the areas of brainpower — by virtue of which thehuman species is superior to allothers.

AI has been identifi�ed as thebiggest existential threat to hu-mans by Tesla and SpaceX CEOElon Musk. The late StephenHawking had also expressed ap-prehensions that future develop-ments in AI “could spell the endof the human race.” Or, as well-known author Yuval Noah Hararisays, “AI will create a uselessclass” of humans. These appre-hensions are a fallout of theground-breaking developmentstaking place in the fi�eld of ma-chine learning — where techno-logy is supplementing (even sup-planting) human intelligence.

Notwithstanding these con-cerns, use of AI has been permeat-ing almost every fi�eld, every in-dustry and even routine activity.It is already helpingbusiness leaders inautomating businessprocesses, gaining in-sights through ad-vanced data analyticsand engaging with cus-tomers/employees withnatural language-pro-cessing chatbots.

Active use of AI has been instru-mental in expediting diagnostics,development of vaccines andtreatment protocol for theCovid-19 pandemic. The need ofthe hour is, therefore, to enhancethe capabilities of human beings

with the support of these intelli-gent machines while attemptingto keep the apprehensions at bay.A leader in any organisation will,therefore, need to develop skillsto seamlessly fuse this ‘mechan-ical’ workforce with ‘human’.

The following skills may comein handy:

Adaptability: The pace of tech-nological advancement is match-ing the speed of light in the vir-tual world of data and productlife is getting shorter day by day.The average product life-cycle forsmartphones is only 12-24months. A leader needs to adaptto this pace of change and usetechnology to keep his organisa-tion ahead.

Emotional intelligence: Wescore over machines, at present,on emotions and empathy eventhough AI-enabled machines arecatching up fast. The capability tomanage his/her emotions andthe ability to connect with/mould other humans off�ers aclear advantage to a leader wheresuccess would depend on infl�u-encing other people.

Data vision: 2.5 quintillionbytes of data is created each day,which is accelerating with thegrowth of Internet of Things

(IoT). The machines arebetter than human be-ings in identifying pat-terns from the data andpresent it into interact-ive dashboards. Leadersneed to develop a datavision to discern signalsfrom noise in data us-ing dashboards to carve

out an eff�ective business strategy,vision and mission of the organ-isation.

The process would typically in-volve mapping, mining, prepara-tion, modelling, analysis, evalu-ation and deployment of data

solutions. Considering the capab-ility of AI to process and calculatea lot more information than hu-mans, Deep Knowledge Ventures(DKV), a venture capital fi�rm inHong Kong, made history in 2017when it appointed the fi�rst AI ro-bot to the board of directors. DKVhas decided not make any posit-ive investment decisions withoutgetting approval from Vital.

Innovation: Innovation has al-ways been crucial to an organisa-tion’s long-term success. In thisage, innovation has to be ‘innov-ated’ to exploit machine intelli-gence to improve productivity,engage customers and employ-ees, improve service delivery andoptimise business processes.

Judgment: For any businessleader, the importance of predict-ing the next market shift or greatproduct and making sense ofmultiple factors needs no em-phasis. AI tools are increasinglybeing adopted to capture pat-terns from the market and pre-dict emerging trends. However,in machine guided decision-mak-

ing, the judgment of a leader be-comes all the more important.The AI algorithm, Beauty.AI, usedto assess an international beautycontest, turned into an embar-rassment as the algorithm pickedthe winners solely on the basis ofskin colour. A leader has to en-sure that bias-free data is used formachine learning and results arethoroughly validated before de-ploying the model.

Vigilance on ‘fake’ data:Deep-fake, a branch of machinelearning, applies neural net sim-ulation to massive data sets, tocreate a ‘fake’. Jordan Peel, anAmerican comedian, used someof the latest AI techniques to cre-ate a fake video of Barack Obamacommenting on President Don-ald Trump to demonstrate thepossibilities of misuse of AI tech-nology.

One can imagine what can bethe consequences of such foulplay in a culturally diverse societyas in India where deep fakes canbe used to create mistrust amongdiff�erent religious groups. A

leader will have to be wary ofsuch fake information to avoidany adverse impact.

Privacy of dataData is the new gold and datamining — legal or illegal — has be-come crucial. The leaders of thenew world will be required tomitigate cyber risks which in-volves establishing organisa-tional policies ranging from em-ployee behaviour to technicalsecurity controls.

Human resource manage-ment: Various studies suggestthat 30-40 per cent of the jobswill be lost to automation by2030. Some jobs will disappearbut there is also no doubt thatnew positions will spring up. Theleaders will have to create an en-abling environment where manand machine can work side byside, compensate for the other’sweaknesses and complement theother’s strengths.

As AI increases in size and scale,leaders would need to cultivate aculture of lifelong learning. It isestimated that every 10 years, aperson will have to acquire newskills to remain relevant in thissecond machine age.

The most daunting challengebefore a leader in the second ma-chine age will be to sustain therelevance of man by leveragingcapabilities which can possiblynot be emulated by smart ma-chines.

Synergy between human andmachine is the winning formulato brave this new world. In thesecond machine age, a leader canfl�ip the coin of technology in hisfavour by enhancing the abovecompetencies.

Amit is with the Ministry of Railwaysand Surbhi is with the FinanceMinistry. Views are personal

Creating a synergy between human and machine will be the winning formula in this brave new world of Artifi�cial Intelligence

AI has the potential to replace humans in the areas of brain power ISTOCK

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