3 things to consider as you learn more about what AI means for your industry
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash
When a University of Chicago professor I admire wrote a book about artificial intelligence (AI), I was eager to read it. An accomplished authority on what’s next in the world of technology, Nick Polson is educating the world on how humans and computers will work together. Being in a field that relies on human intelligence and the ability to plan for the future, I had mixed feelings about embracing what’s next. But it IS what’s next -- finance people at two Fortune 100s I work with are both investing in AI and machine-learning for FP&A. So I dove in, ready to understand the technology that will become our new partner in the office.
I began reading with some excitement, some apprehension, lots of intrigue. How will humans work hand in hand with computers in the next decade? Are we ready to embrace this technology in the financial or FP&A field? Are jobs at risk? Will more jobs be created?
What I wasn’t ready for? To laugh so much. Seriously, there were some laugh-out-loud moments. I laughed harder at this book than any other I’ve read in a while and it was a nice reminder that we humans will adapt to and guide the technology at our fingertips, all while maintaining the sense of humor that ushers us through periods of change and advancement.
Digesting the book got me thinking about how AI will change industries across the board in less than a generation. Our children won’t know a world without it. They’re never going to know a time without touch-screens, Alexas, and Netflix-suggested watch lists. These are big ideas and important ones and I believe every industry owes it to themselves to dig deeper into what AI will do for their business. Which technologies will become obsolete? Which advancements will create greater opportunity? Which jobs will adapt?
Read on for three take-aways I think are important, and positive, what to keep in mind when considering AI’s role in business, and -- bonus -- three excerpts that made me laugh out loud reading AIQ.
New tools will take the place of old tools to level the playing field
Today, businesses continue to rely on programs like Excel to forecast future scenarios and plan accordingly. But surveys show that organizations are ready to move beyond what traditional spreadsheet software like Excel can offer. Large organizations already have. As AI progresses, reports will be automated on a universal level and it’s likely that the smaller fish will have access to the sorts of information only big corporations had in the past.
This is great news for a market that embraces diversity and equality in business. Imagine if a mom-and-pop business has access to the same foresight as the big chain retailers? AI could level the playing field by bringing standardized tools to small and mid-sized businesses across the globe. All business leaders could have access to the advantage of bringing past, present, and future performance to the decision-making table. Not only this, AI can make decision-making a reality in real-time, rather than reactionary. This wasn’t possible just a few short years ago.
New tools will make information instantaneous, accurate, and accessible.
Human Intelligence will still hold the reigns
As Micheal Coveney of Digitalist Magazine communicates: For FP&A, AI is the automation of actions based on analysis of available data in order to mimic the way a person would make a decision. And there’s the problem.
Yes, humans make decisions based on data, but they are also heavily influenced by experience, gut feeling, biased views, whimsical notions, and sometimes “just to be different”—none of which can be codified for a machine to perform.
Professor Polson illustrates this beautifully in his book - the future is a place not where we are made obsolete by AI, but where we work cleverly alongside these new tools. AI cannot replace the all-powerful gut feeling by which many CEOs and industry leaders make monumental decisions. AI will not replace years of experience in a field or replicate the trust a team has in one another. We humans continue to be in charge of this technology and how we use it to advance our businesses and simplify our lives.
This follows flawlessly with what I wrote recently about what happens when forecasts are wrong. We will always need humans to analyze the data and help executive teams to make sense of the many probable scenarios.
We will learn, adapt, and laugh as we go
As experts have identified, even AI has its challenges. The most glaring problem is ambiguity in language. There are things that the human brain can digest, that a computer simply cannot.
Modern language is filled with finicky ambiguities throughout. A few humorous examples from AIQ made me laugh and shake my head. These are sayings that we instantly interpret as normal that a machine or robot would alarmingly alert us to. A computer would misinterpret the following with often disastrous results:
"DEFENDANT GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE is not about an unusual form of confinement."
"INCLUDE YOUR CHILDREN WHEN BAKING COOKIES is not a recipe suggestion."
"BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS is about an indecisive Labour Party, not an abandoned breakfast."
Or -- bare with me -- even if two sentences are interpreted differently, they may sound exactly the same:
"The president's new direction has split his party."
"The president's nude erection has split his party."
Laughter aside, AI is already a major part of our lives and will continue to play an even bigger role. Booking travel through a chatbot, trusting that Siri has directions to downtown, disease mapping during COVID (two past attendees of my FP&A programs work at Metabiota which does just this)...these AI tools have already made their way into our day-to-day existence. The question, and challenge, is how to work with the tools to stay in control while bringing incredible possibility to our lives.
I’ll be following new trends closely and investing time into what AI means for the FP&A community. I think we’re still in the first inning but I foresee the next few years, accelerated by COVID, as changing the FP&A landscape. I urge you to do the same within your own field. There is much to learn and adapt to and this is an exciting time with rapid development.
While there are certainly nefarious examples in AIQ and what we hear on the new, I encourage you to get inspired by what AI has to offer. Learn about the new tools available in your industry, and what’s emerging. And finally, remember to laugh when Alexa puts edamame, not M&Ms, on your grocery list.
Sources:
https://www.jedox.com/en/blog/is-ai-enhancing-or-disrupting-fpa/