AI-enabled enterprise starts with education, not tech

AI literacy is a must

Jordan pointed to AI Magazine and O'Reilly Media's artificial intelligence newsletter as two "simple examples" of how CIOs can incorporate AI education into their daily routines and that of their teams. She described this as just "a sprinkling," but said the reading material can encourage discussions about artificial intelligence and how its resurgence might affect the future of the company.

Reading up on AI could be worthwhile even for the smallest organizations, according to Jordan. "It no longer requires a multimillion-dollar budget to get AI started in your organization," she said.

Nichole Jordan

Take mergers and acquisitions, which require advisors to monitor and analyze disparate and often siloed data sources such as patent filings or regulatory findings. Today, AI is doing that kind of work and even collecting metrics on company culture, customer feedback and employee engagement that it scrapes from sites such as Glassdoor.

"Over time, the AI is able to develop and monitor trends, patterns, make recommendations to you for potentially other companies to put into your acquisitions portfolio," Jordan said. "It is about speed and accuracy and being able to analyze a lot of data that we didn't historically have the opportunity to bring together into one place."

Knowledge overhype

Affectiva's Gabi Zijderveld echoed Jordan's remarks, saying that education is a must.

"There's so much hype and fluff around AI because every bit of technology today is [marketed as] AI," said Zijderveld, chief marketing officer and head of product strategy at the emotion measurement company.

As CIOs familiarize themselves with what's out there, they also need to get a grip on the appropriate opportunities AI can provide to their companies, according to Zijderveld. In Affectiva's case, its first customers came from an obvious market segment.

Gabi Zijderveld

Media and advertising companies began using the emotion AI technology, which can interpret facial expressions in real time, to test their content and assess audience response. These days, customers include educators who use the technology to help children with autism decode facial expressions, as well as medical care workers who can use it to detect Parkinson's disease or as a benchmark for facial reconstruction surgery.

Zijderveld also suggested CIOs look at industry best practices, talk to their peers, find out what competitors are doing and uncover good examples of applied AI, taking note of their results and the products and technologies that drove those results.

And she provided a note of caution for CIOs: Don't fall into the over-engineering trap. "If you have an old-fashioned ruler that does the job, maybe you don't need AI there," she said. "Use the damn ruler."

Lifelong learning is key

For Sophie Vandebroek, vice president of emerging technology partnerships at IBM, building the AI-enabled enterprise means developing employee skills.

"At IBM, in fact, we are being measured to make sure we take 40 hours of education every year on these kinds of topics," she said.

Not only is training important, but hiring and bringing in the right skills is also key, according to Vandebroek. For AI-enabled enterprises to succeed, employees who know how to use AI tools, especially as they become more accessible, easier to use and embedded into workflows, will be critical.

Vandebroek cited IBM's Project Debater product as an example of how AI could change workflows. The AI system has been trained to take a topic, craft an argument and debate its merits -- in minutes. Vandebroek believes a technology like this could help companies work through difficult decisions they need to make, such as with an acquisition.

As part of that education, companies -- from the board of directors on down -- need to recognize the importance of trust and transparency, according to Vandebroek. She stressed decisions be explainable and that data privacy be made a priority.