Generative AI won’t automate your way to business model innovation

But not even a ChatGPT super prompt will make progress or transformation easier. A response generated by AI won’t solve the real business challenges facing executives across the organization, either. A common but critical challenge I hear from CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs every day is that they have a difficult time helping the C-suite understand that IT is the very architecture for the future of business, not a cost center. How do you convince decision-makers to collaborate on linking IT strategy with business strategy?

Technology won’t solve (all) your problems

When avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director Laurie Anderson was named artist-in-residence at Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), she mused about the role of AI in creative problem-solving. She recalled one of her favorite quotes by, of all people, her meditation teacher: “If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology — and you don’t understand your problems.”

Her point is that AI or generative AI isn’t a silver bullet. She compared AI to the purpose of art, which made me think differently about the role then of AI and creativity in business transformation.

“When people say the purpose of art is to make the world a better place I always think: better for who?” Anderson said in the same Wired article. “If I had to use one word to describe art it would be freedom,” she continued. “I’m curious about whether this freedom can be translated or facilitated by AI in a meaningful way.”

The same can be said for digital and business transformation. If work and technology are to serve the purpose of making businesses better in this digital renaissance, the question is, better for who? And what does better look like? What makes it more meaningful?

Like automation, the prompts most of us are experimenting with are rooted in what we know. Thus, the problems we’re trying to solve are based on how we see them today. With a more open mind, creativity, and human ingenuity, we can reframe our problems and also pursue previously unforeseen opportunities.