Intelligent Governance – Key to value from AI

We have been holding back on an insight on AI. It felt like a bandwagon not worth jumping on, nor lamely exploiting in pursuit of clicks. Yet we have thoughts, as experienced practitioners in how digital technology delivers value we have insight we thought we would share. If only to clarify for ourselves our position.

First thing we need to do is to set to one side our pedant self. The pedant that notes that the current tools that are touted as AI all over the press are not, in our view, “artificial intelligence”. Whilst ChatGPT may pass the Turing Test, it and the other members of the current generation of tools are not truly artificially intelligent. And yet, getting on an intellectual high horse is in so many ways is not a helpful or productive discussion.

In our view, that’s not the important question. The important questions for us, include:

• What are these tools for?
• Who are these tools for? And
• How do we govern the use of the tools?

And perhaps the hardest questions are the governance questions. For example, what values or ethical perspective do we want to use in governing the use of these tools. We see the governance challenge to be the most important right now. Building governance maturity, intelligent governance that matches the needs of organisations is key. And based on all our experince, that maturity alignment is best achieved by engaging with the tools, experimenting with capabilities and what they mean for you and your organisation, including how do you feel about their capability. As ever learning by doing is the most effective approach.