itstargetnews
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, people are watching the wrong movie. They point to “The Terminator,” but the real danger can be found in Disney’s “Fantasia.”
In Terminator, an all-powerful, flawless AI becomes sentient, decides humans are the enemy, and begins a nuclear apocalypse. In Fantasia’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, Mickey Mouse puts a spell on a broom to make it do his job. The broom breaks down, continuously pouring buckets of water into the overflowing well. When Mickey smashes the broom, each piece becomes a new water-carrying robot. He almost drowned before the magician stopped the disaster.
You see the difference? We might worry about an AI statement, but the real danger is running hordes of poorly managed agent systems that create chaos while they don’t manage ordinary workplace tasks. The agent messup starts small, with hallucinations or bad advice from chatbots. Recently, AI researchers have observed that uncontrolled agent systems can develop dangerous behaviors, even sending threatening emails to people that prevent them from completing their tasks.
This does not mean that we should stop. I’m a big believer in AI, and for over a year, my company has made significant early contributions to making agent systems better. I believe, however, that we need to think about how to work the magic of AI effectively, considering both the right kinds of software robots and the work they should and shouldn’t do.
The well-trained witch
For the most part, the initial wizards who make agent AI a workplace standard are chief information officers, chief technology officers, and entrepreneurs with a deep understanding of technology. This is in line with a decade-long trend of business processes working with increasingly sophisticated computing, with significant differences.
Businesses have gone through periods of widespread automation, with computers within companies mapping and recording activities such as marketing campaigns and effective use of business resources. CIOs keep up with the latest hardware and software. Then came the digital transformation, carried out in work areas such as marketing, commerce, or HR to digital services, often rented through remote cloud computing. Companies want SalesforceMarketo, and Workday flourished, as CIOs built a portfolio of services for their companies to use.
Today, as the agent systems work directly, CIOs must become proficient in understanding the business processes of their organizations, while helping business leaders in different parts of the organization to develop their skills.
The new job of tech savvy business and tech savvy people is to work with the CEO and figure out the best ways for agents to work in each line of business. They examine the work paths and ways people work within the organization’s culture. They determine which parts are safely and effectively automated by agents, and how people work with these agents.
The era of high-touch automation
Generic chatbots are a great but undervalued corporate tool. The real value of agent AI comes from applying proprietary corporate data and injecting an understanding of corporate culture and processes into an agent, internal and external suppliers, partners, and customers. Like a new employee, the agent must be able to digest internal data and local rules, such as the threshold when a purchase order requires managerial approval.
The rules governing security and management are particularly important, as they help reduce the risk of catastrophic error. Agents need the ability to record and explain their actions, giving people knowledge of what the agent is doing and an audit trail to verify that business rules are being followed.
Rubrik is one of the many companies making this a reality. Using our core strengths in corporate security and continuous uptime, we have developed ways to quickly integrate large amounts of high-value, secured data into agile systems. We are working on faster AI workflows, security, and management systems. There’s still a lot to do, but the progress we’re seeing, at Rubrik and elsewhere, is gratifying.
The future still belongs to the people
One challenge is optimizing how people, from entry-level employees to top executives, best work with agents. The magician’s job is not to run things for them, like a guided Mickey Mouse, but to create intuitive systems that help people add things that AI can’t. These are the tasks of intuition, taste, imagination, human empathy and connection, and everything else that goes into encouraging customer loyalty and company action.
AI is trained on current data, AKA the past. That makes some predictions possible, but only for the future that imitates the past, without real breakthroughs in products, services, or ways of working. That is the human factor, supplemented by new wizards, enabling and promoting new skills throughout the workforce.
These leaders must find themselves new ways to add human value to what they do. This includes finding new ways to bring in entry-level employees, who previously learned high-value knowledge of corporate culture and data on the job, and will now do so with agents. These young people are still important, especially because they are likely to be the most AI-savvy employees.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
