Managers have been advised to promote ethical awareness as a skill needed to work effectively with Artificial Intelligence-driven operations in their organisations.
For employees, they urged organisations to continually upskill and train them on data and AI tools for an efficient workflow. Managing Director, Neovia, located in the United Kingdom (UK), Connor Blake, said this during Webinar Series Nine, organised by Kaizen Academy, where he spoke on ‘Unlocking Efficiency: How AI Can Transform Business Operations.’
Noting that it was about humans, he said what was needed was a shift in the mindset for AI usage.
According to him, AI is no longer just a buzzword, but is revolutionising how organisations operate, innovate and compete. On key considerations when building AI strategies that align with business goals, he said it was about freeing up the capacity of employees so that they could do better jobs for their customers.
“To start with, the business outcomes, AI has got to serve the business. The focus is on AI serving the business strategy, not just for technological sake. It is about having AI as an enabler and purpose-driven, while impact is the goal,” he said.
Chief Digital Officer, Leadway Holdings, Nigeria, Diana Mulili, who stressed how employers could address the fear of job displacement with the advent of AI, pointed out the challenges of trust and identity issues.
With this, she said, what employees are afraid of is the fear of irrelevance in their workplaces. She said that by governing with transparency, focusing on the low-hanging fruit, and educating the workers, it would be a win-win for all. On the roadblocks businesses face when adopting AI and how they can overcome them, Mulili stated that once the data was not clean, standardised and connected, AI would hallucinate.
Daryush Laqab, Chief AI Officer, Ascendion, stressed how AI can optimise human resources (HR) processes in ways traditional methods cannot.
Noting that there is still a need to go back to the basics when talking about automation, he said there are new opportunities to bring about and also to recognise the return on investment on items that organisations wanted to automate in the past.
On the key lessons and practices African companies must adopt when integrating AI into their business operations around scaling and governance, Laqab, who is also an Instructor, University of Chicago Booth School of Business (USA), said it was time for Africans to think and build global, having the mindset that everybody in the world was going to use their products. He advised that they should not be afraid of leapfrogging where the industry was going.
Chief Executive Officer and Chief AI Officer, ChitHub (UK), Michael Agbogo, stressed the kind of leadership and cross-functional collaboration that is required to successfully integrate AI into business operations.
Noting that culture was everything organisations needed to look at on the leadership side, Agbogo said companies must strive to build a culture that could support innovation. He urged that they must build trust, engage and ensure they build proper stakeholder management.
