All the recent advancements in AI have shown us something. There's a cost of inaction in AI. In this post, I suggest some initial steps that companies can take to make their organizations keep up with AI advancements.

Introduction

Over the last year, I have found it increasingly difficult to stay on top of all the new AI-based technologies that are being released which increase individual and team productivity. 2023, in particular, has felt like an endless flurry of advancements and I assume this will continue until 2030 if not accelerate further.

To top it off, we now have Nvidia’s CEO saying it’s likely that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be here in five years. While I’m skeptical of that claim, I can see where he and others like him are coming from. Simply keeping up the rate of advancement takes us at least close to it.

There’s an argument for the rate of change not being sustainable unless new AI architectures are released. The core argument boils down to that LLMs are already ingesting all the content of the internet and increasing current capabilities beyond this point will require even more training data, which is not available except to a few companies due to their proprietary platforms. These companies are Alphabet, X (former Twitter), and Meta through Facebook. In any case, the data they have won’t carry us to AGI and we will need a new architecture that learns more from less training data to cross the capability gap. Still, LLMs and other AIs will deliver huge productivity benefits over the coming years with or without AGI.

Despite working within the AI industry for over a decade and having seen firsthand how many of the technologies are developed, I struggle to keep up with all the advancements. I ask myself, how does someone who isn’t an AI expert keep up? The only answer I can come up with is that if the current rate of development continues, nobody will unless we adapt our organizations to this faster pace of technological development.

The Cost of Inaction

As leaders, we need to face the fact that in AI there is both a massive risk and opportunity. With risk, I don’t mean the doomsday scenario the media so much likes talking about. The immediate risk is that unless we adapt our organizations to this new age, our companies will lose to competitors.

Over the next five years, I believe internet and software companies will have the potential to increase average worker output by more than 10% per year, meaning that I expect that it is possible to increase productivity by over 50% over the next five years if companies play their cards right.

The opportunity of course is that this productivity gain will mean increased market share for some and possibly new business cases through the advancements in technology. However, to look at it from another perspective, the cost of inaction is to become 50% less competitive over the next five years. I don’t think anyone can afford that.

The solution

Imagine a scenario where every six to twelve months there are new technologies or features released that end up increasing the productivity of workers by 10%. How do we adapt to a situation like that?

First, we need to be honest with ourselves and realize that most of the advancements will pass us by if the organization is not flexible enough to react and take new technologies into use. Immediately, I see two things that can be done in any organization.

1. Create a new role whose purpose is to learn about the new technologies being released and have the organization take into use the most promising ones for your business. This role will pay for itself in any team larger than 10 people if the 10% increased productivity each year can be reached. In a small team, this role can report directly to the CEO or CTO, while in a larger company, you may need to have one such person per department. In that case, I would suggest they become the Innovation Team and report to the Chief Information Officer or Chief Strategy Officer if your company has such a role.
2. Training. From the year since ChatGPT’s release, it’s become clear that some people are more enthusiastic about advancements and thus better at taking new technologies into use than others. My suggestion is to find out who these people are in your team and empower them to become super users of the new technologies. Then encourage them to create training material for the others in the team to share the knowledge across the organization.

Cost of inaction and AGI

While there’s some time until AGI will be here, I think it relevant for businesses to start thinking about how such advancements could affect them. Creating an Innovation Team that recommends which new technologies to take into use is a good start to prepare for that. We don’t know how AGI will manifest nor when it will arrive, however, we know based on recent advancements that once it does the window to act to preserve your company’s position will be slim.