The Art of Articulating Human versus Algorithmic Value
There is a substantial and important on-going debate about technological unemployment as a result of artificial intelligence replacing human labor (intellectual, physical and emotional), and the tasks that artificial intelligence is already able to exponentially speed up.
The two polar extremes of the debate are: AI will be able to do everything and replace everyone, and the other extreme is there are far too many reasons humans are needed for AI to take that many jobs.
As with everything else, the answer probably lies somewhere in between. But in this case, where matters — a lot. Where one’s perception stands on the spectrum is critically important as it has professional, financial, investment, recruitment, competitiveness, revenue growth and strategy implications on organizations. I say perception because no one can definitively see the future to be able to properly answer the question. As the expression goes ‘perception is reality’ and that is the reality we make decisions on.
This edition of the Abundant Tech Minded Strategy goes over the questions that need to be answered, regardless of where you fall on this AI jobs spectrum, and that is:
- How does an organization articulate and differentiate human value versus algorithmic value? #Humanity
- “I know I need human talent but I don’t know where exactly, how should I go about figuring it out with all this exponential change?” Strategic Vision meets #DigitalTwin Value Mapping
- What should business leaders keep an eye on to stay competitive? The #Edge
So long as there are humans in the economy, #humanity will matter
Implementing AI into organizational workflows is necessary and key to improving an organization’s value proposition, but it is also critical to staying relevant as competitors and new comers alike are creating new value and enhancing service offerings with artificial intelligence. With a rush to implement algorithms, there hasn’t been a conversation about how to elevate and understand the human talent value for each task that AI has replaced. In the interest of covering all the three questions above, this section will only focus on answering this by unpacking a recent comment by Sam Altman which is making the rounds (with many questioning the timing of these bold statements as he works towards raising $7 trillion):
Altman expects that “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists and creative professionals for today will nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by AI.” For the purposes of this article’s thought exercise, we will assume that this statement is correct.
It is easy to read this bold statement and think that 95% of agencies, strategists and creative professionals will be replaced. However, the key part of this sentence I’d like to unpack is the framing. That AI will nearly instantly replace 95% of what they do today. So what are these professionals (myself as a strategist included) meant to do tomorrow? And what is it truly that these professionals are in the business of doing? A director of an advertising agency reached out to me to answer exactly that question as he was concerned that generativeAI developments were going to make some of his employees redundant and he was worried that this would affect his agency’s financial bottom line. In the presentation I delivered to his team (you can see it here) I contextualized our moment in time and explained that:
Technology does not take away jobs, it levels up the industry and talent in it.
However, only if organizations and professionals want it to. I explained that every single professional, and every single business operates in the same context of exponential technology change and that we need to all revisit and reimagine the value we bring. It is also an opportunity to proactively take charge of the narrative and redefine the story of the value we deliver both as individuals and organizations. New technology means new tools to do the job. In the case of this design agency I asked them the question I ask all my clients:
What are you in the business of doing?
I told them that they are not in the business of creating graphics for ads, or managing social media accounts, or thinking of taglines and catchy brand activators. This is not the “customer pain point” that they are solving for. The human value of the human talent in a design agency is cultural fluency, effective communication and competitive empathy skills. This is the era for creative advertising agencies to lean into their role as cultural curators and navigators helping their clients communicate meaningfully in their target market’s socio-cultural context. To do so cultural fluency is needed, and to have that it requires that human talent to be open and empathetic to the changing socio-cultural fabric of the market.
What these new generativeAI advancements have done is removed barriers and created an opportunity for everyone to create beautiful graphics. But is has not given everyone the superpower of cultural fluency and the skill of effective communication and message penetration to target audiences in key markets. For this, agencies with skilled human talent are needed as this is a pain point that requires elite human talent for. It is a bright new era for agencies who are willing to step up to reinvent themselves and meet this moment.
- 🤸♀️[Example] Human Strength: For those wanting to see an example of multi cultural fluency, check out seasoned culture expert Martin Karaffa demonstrate the human talent value that human nuance in cultural fluency can bring to brands.
- 🤖 [Example] AI Strength: For those looking for AI assistant use cases to bolster brand engagement with its audience check out this article with five ways AI assistants are a key component of a brand’s portfolio.
Enter Vision + Digital Twins: Precision Human Talent: Right Place, Right Time
“I know I need human talent but I don’t know where exactly, how should I go about figuring it out with all this exponential change?”
Many leaders recognize that while artificial intelligence can replace many tasks, and in some cases jobs all together, human talent is still needed. The question is where is this human talent needed? What are the skills they should have? And how to leverage human talent to stay competitive in the market?
The answer to this includes strategy and technology. As a strategist working in emerging technologies, I will unpack this this while weaving in Altman’s quote above about how 95% of what strategists do today “will be replaced by AI”.
Literally hundreds of thousands of people have been let go in the past few years across the tech industry, but there are still hundreds of thousands of job openings. So it is about restructuring for the most optimal use of talent.
To those who are figuring out how to do it, I would (in broad brushstrokes) offer one thought exercise as an approach. This is the same thought exercise I presented to an organization that had talent spread across geographies and needed to posture for the significant portion of their talent pool that was retiring out in the near term.
The thought exercise starts with first defining what the vision of the company is and what the company will opt in and out of as it moves forward. Then articulate what human talent gaps (as well as technology infrastructure gaps) there are. After this, a digital twin will be able to create a visual API to understand the talent in an organization as well as the gaps. Leveraging artificial intelligence and additional datasets, organizations will be able to anticipate talent needs and more efficiently identify where they are most needed in an organization. Lastly this thought process would benefit tremendously from stress testing it through scenario-based planning (follow Robin Champ for tips) that includes macro trends affecting all markets such as: climate change, geopolitical conflict (follow Velina Tchakarova for the latest), technological supply chain constraints, demographics, cultural changes (follow Jasmine Bina for changes on the edge), energy advancements (follow Tony Seba for projections) etc.
If all the data already exists its just a matter of plugging it in and/or consulting the digital twin through a conversational chat interface to help interpret the data. No strategists are needed as this is something that can be done by those managing data in the organization. Where human strategy comes into play is in the beginning and end of this thought exercise. The beginning which is the imagining part and making the tough calls about where to divest and where to invest. The space where humans are making the big bets even when they are leveraging algorithms to inform them. Algorithms are not the all-knowing or the all-seeing and they hallucinate. I would argue humans also have some similar challenges. However, human strategists offer several value propositions, they are in the business of:
- 📈 Bespoke narration of how macrotrends will impact an organization.
- ✨ Effective and imaginative technology communication to help businesses understand the new use cases and the new disruptions at play that they will need to navigate.
- 🔮 Tailored foresight to the vision of the company, its competitors and concerns.
- 🤝 Support business leaders as a human sounding board for the big and consequential decisions they have to make in this volatile time.
- 💥Offer a critical (human) outsider perspective to help shake the group think and bias that inevitably happens inside the c-suite and executive leadership groups.
Even the biggest and the strongest are not guaranteed survival. We have seen this with Kodak, Nokia, Yahoo and others. As this animated chart shows, staying at the top of the Fortune 500 is a continuously fighting battle; and for many, a losing one.
As for incumbent market leaders, its important they keep an eye on the edge of their market because the edge becomes center and as we can see with the nine month old French startup Mistral who with their smaller size is challenging big tech LLMs (including Google and OpenAI) — there are new and creative ways of disrupting the market; and an algorithm won’t always be the one to predict them.
The new Googles are being created today.
Staying Competitive = Growth Mindset & is Being in the Know
And finally, to answer the last question:
What should business leaders keep an eye on to stay competitive?
With rapid exponential technological change comes rapid market change. As we have seen in the past twelve months ChatGPT took the world by storm and has dramatically changed and supplemented many business value chains — some even went out of business. The change is not over, its only getting started. [check out 3 KPI’s to know if your organization is heading in the right direction.]
Business leaders need to maintain a growth mindset and actively create time to engage with the very latest that is happening on the edge, because at some point the edge becomes center. In conjunction with a growth mindset, it is important to exercise one’s imagination to think about dramatically different alternate futures. In the coming years we will witness many new “normals” emerge and it will be the people who imagined it that create it. And those who are able to see the vision early, that will be able to capitalize on it. For example those who see Improbable’s inception on broadcast sports, or how vertical take off and landing (VTOL) is going to change micro mobility, real estate, offices and entertainment (something I will be writing about soon).
Secondly, is being in the know. Business leaders today should have someone who is tech scouting, trend scouting, culture scouting and bringing the latest information to them each week (at a minimum each month). In an era of rapid change, this is valuable anticipatory knowledge. Particularly edge practices, ideas, technologies and use cases in one’s market. Artificial intelligence may be able to help with gathering some of that data, but to validate it a human is needed who travels and engages with different communities and who has a network who has a strong pulse on what is happening.
I’ll let Steve Jobs have the final thoughts on what business leaders should do:
“Stay hungry.”
I’m writing a book about the importance of imagination in business success and competitiveness called Imagination Dilemma and how businesses can overcome it to thrive. You can sign up for more information here.
Whenever you’re ready, here are three ways I can help you:
1. Consulting: reach out to explore the strategic advisory services I offer (reports, research and workshops) focusing on business growth opportunity areas, competitiveness, moat protection and emerging technologies. Check out my Linkedin profile for the over one hundred glowing reviews about my advisory work.
2. Board Advisor: if you are looking to diversify your board’s thought leadership with complex systems thinking, emerging technologies, a world view and a team player contact me.
3. Speaking & Workshops: my global speaking engagements on emerging technologies, the 4th industrial revolution, artificial intelligence and the importance of imagination in an era of AI have been well received with comments like “I wish I met Lydia sooner” and “I deeply admire her intelligence and humanity, and of her ability to challenge and explore how to make any enterprise more impactful and successful toward the greater good.” Reach out to book me for a talk.
