Q&A: Businesses need to be the boss of AI, or else

The big issue with AI right now is that it’s not regulated, so you see things like deep fakes of Taylor Swift before the Super Bowl. You’ll see more deep fakes during the election season. 

We don’t have a lot of guardrails for AI, so businesses and individuals need to always be aware of the dystopian aspects of AI, and technology in general. But there are ways to fend off the dark side and use AI for good.

What steps can businesses take to fend off the dark side and successfully integrate AI and robotics?

One way is to not just talk about innovation as an amorphous thing, but to actually want to innovate. 

This means investing time and money in AI R&D. With generative AI, we have a solution without any real use cases. Companies need to start using it for real. You may need to bring in new technology talent who aren’t afraid of AI and innovation. You may have to invest in reskilling people.

This idea that everyone will just have a job is probably not true. If I’m running a team of five people and I can run it with three, I’m going to run it with three. However, if I’m truly innovative, I’ll keep the five people and give task-oriented parts of their jobs to AI and have them spend more time on creative thinking and collaboration. The companies that do that will be more successful than the ones that just cut people.

Ultimately, we are the boss of AI. We cannot rely on AI to run our businesses for us! If we don’t set up AI to be subservient to us now, we could be in trouble.

Anat Baron will be the keynote speaker at FutureIT Los Angeles 2024 on March 12.