Buoyed By Gains From AI Apps, New-Age Firms Would Be Different From The Traditional Ones

AI is subject to the fundamental principle of ‘garbage in garbage out’ that did not apply to human intelligence because the latter could invoke ‘logic’, ‘power of re-call’ and ‘imagination’. AI applications are situation-specific

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Digital India' call provided a timely push to business transactions as corporates switched over to online work, gadget-driven speedy deliv-ery and reached out to more customers.

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is sweeping the business world in a manner that makes it necessary to administer a word of caution to all concerned against presum-ing that AI is the quick-time panacea for all their problems - big and small. The im-portant point here is that India, poised to emerge as the third largest economy, bene-fitted a great deal from the strategic initiative of speeding up with "digitisation".

This policy flowed right from the top and gave the country a significant competitive advantage in the globalised world enabling it to move ahead of others in the ‘knowledge economy’ race. India was a leading power and a storehouse of talent so far as IT was concerned and it will not be presumptuous to conclude that it will guide the world in the area of AI applications, too. These applications will expedite growth, im-prove efficiency and also take care of the issues of security that 'digitisation' would create for all stakeholders. There cannot be a one-fit for all, but a progressive under-standing of the specific needs of an organisation, will go a long way in giving that par-ticular business a competitive advantage. AI can never replace human jobs complete-ly. It can free human hands of routine tasks that do not bank on creativity, strategic thinking and leadership qualities. A company that makes its employees do their jobs better or "more swiftly" will need to make the existing manpower more productive.

AI is adopted for creating business value and this has to be done in an innovative and ethical way to win customers' confidence. Human intelligence and imagination are needed while planning for an AI application. After all, AI is a ‘product’ and not a ‘sub-stitute’ for the human mind. AI aims at enhancing operational efficiency and has to be built into the concerned "processes". Its validation takes time and cannot be fixed in a moment.

It is advisable to start with AI applications for small management projects and make them a part of the evolution of the larger organisational growth. It has to be under-stood that AI lays the path of steady progress and cannot be "ordered" to produce in-stant results except in the area of 'data analytics' where algorithms can be devised to read the "patterns" for further deductions and "machine learning" to help a certain degree of "automation". AI is important but there is something unnatural about the way every business is feeling pressurised to embrace it like a blind spot for success in terms of achieving an immediate enhancement of "productivity" and "return on in-vestment".

When the Information Technology revolution appeared on the scene in 1991, the world transformed from the Industrial Age to the Information Age and a new level of globalisation was set in because of instant communications, thanks to the www effect. Businesses got new opportunities for reaching out to customers and prospects of di-versification, mergers and acquisitions multiplied. With the advent of Artificial Intel-ligence (AI), it became possible to analyse a large amount of data that was humanly impossible to examine earlier. Also, "machine learning" could be used for improving "processes" and making transactions cost-effective in terms of time utilisation, which would boost "productivity" and consequently enhance "profitability".

Analysis of what was available in the public domain always helped to produce "intelli-gence" that could provide this insight. Analysis is the instrument that allowed for the advantage of human imagination and far-sight to be built into AI applications.

Digitisation in general and AI in particular created a new socio-economic atmosphere that gave intensive for launching start-ups and innovating "products" and "services". On the other hand, in the strategic sphere, it allowed "proxy wars" to replace open military attacks- social media emerging as a particularly powerful instrument of com-bat. Misinformation, "deepfakes" and indoctrination are used for narrative building against a regime. They were affecting people's lives by exposing them to newer kinds of cyber fraud and also creating a new risk profile for businesses.

Just as Information Technology fundamentally altered the lifestyle of people, AI is likely to impact the cultural outlook of society- creating a new normal for businesses, interpersonal interactions and social values. The Information Age had mandated that being well-informed was the key to success in any field and Artificial Intelligence has further added to the importance of being aware of what was happening within the so-ciety and also in the world outside. Business-customer relations, people’s approach to the ruling elite and life in the universities are all impacted by AI offerings. "Writing assistants" are helping the "cost-effective" management of organisations. What has gained in importance is the discipline of accepting and acting only on reliable infor-mation. One should not run into the erroneous belief that whatever appeared on the internet is trustworthy.

There are both promises and perils associated with AI and this is a sobering thought for all well-informed people. It is interesting to recall that two of this year’s physics Nobel laureates are IT pioneers-John Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto. Hinton warned that AI, which he compared with "another Industrial Revolution", could produce unforeseen consequences with things ‘going out of control’. Hopfield was even more forthright in declaring at a university conclave that "AI could create an apocalypse". Hinton praised GPT4-an AI offering- saying that "if I want to know the answer to anything I would just ask it", but added with a twist that 'I do not totally trust it because it can hallucinate'.

AI is subject to the fundamental principle of ‘garbage in garbage out’ that did not ap-ply to human intelligence because the latter could invoke ‘logic’, ‘power of recall’ and ‘imagination’. AI applications are situation-specific, anchored on processes and meant to produce long-term gains for the organisation. In the times ahead, successful CEOs would be well-versed in AI and those working for them would be individuals who had been up-skilled about AI applications- even though they might not be "technologists" themselves. The new-age businesses would be different from the traditional-looking ones in as much as they would be far more competent and aggressive about exploring the ‘opportunities’ and averting the ‘risks’