The AI-Savvy Leader: 9 Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work
David De Cremer
Harvard Business Review Press (January 2023)

How and why AI is best viewed as an invaluable coworker

I recently re-read Vernon Vinge’s essay, “The Coming of Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” (1993), in which he suggests that “the acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur.”

In The Singularity Is Near (2005), Ray Kurzweil predicts that “convergent, exponential technological trends” are “leading to a transition that would be ‘utterly transformative’ for  humanity.” I was again reminded of that prediction  as I began to read The Singularity Is Nearer in which Kurzweil explains how and why humanity’s “Millennia-long march toward the Singularity has become a sprint. In the introduction to The Singularity Is Near, I wrote that we were then ‘in the early stages of this transition.’ Now we are entering its culmination. That book was about glimpsing a distant horizon — this one is about the last miles along the path to reach it .”

According to David De Cremer, “Adapting AI is — symbolically speaking — a no-brainer for business to grow today, for three reasons. First, AI is undoubtedly an excellent tool for a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world…Second, AI is helpful to promote an organization’s innovation potential and, hence, its level of competitiveness…Third, the economics of adopting AI are becoming more favorable: adopting has never cost less (though doing it right costs a lot). The underlying machine-learning and deep-learning techniques that power AI systems are often open source, and cloud-based services for storing data are increasingly commonplace and inexpensive…At the same time. AI is — literally speaking — a no-brainer because it has no human brain and thus no human-level intellectual abilities.”

Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations need effective leadership at all levels and in all areas of operation throughout the given enterprise. De Cremer asserts — and I wholly agree — that in months and years to come, the most effective leaders must have “the right mindset, the right motivation, or the willingness to be a role model to ensure that AI deployment is successful.”

His focus in The AI-Savvy Leader is on the nine responsibilities business leaders need to address for successful AI adoption. More specifically, HOW? De Cremer devotes a separate chapter to each of the nine.

l. Get to know AI, and learn to use it as a leader
2. Use your purpose to ask the right kinds of questions
3. Work in inclusive ways to drive human-AI collaborations
4. Build a flat communication culture
5. Be visionary in how to use AI
6. Adapt AI with all stakeholders in mind.
7. Use a human-centered approach to AI adoption
8. Augment (don’t automate) to create jobs
9. Accept that soft skills are the new hard skills and practice them

Those who read this book with appropriate care and then apply what they learn will be well-prepared to lead efforts to make AI work…and do so with high impact.

These are David De Cremer’s concluding thoughts: “Be prepared to invest significant time and effort to master the art of leadership in a business world dominated by AI. Embrace your leadership responsibilities vigorously as if your life in the AI world depends on it. Because it most certainly does!”

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading The AI-Savvy Leader: First, highlight key passages. Also, perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to key points made within the narrative. Also record your responses to specific or major issues or questions addressed or suggested in the material, especially comments at the conclusion of chapters.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.