Discover six ways in which you can start using generative AI now to boost the impact of your business’ marketing activities
It has never been easier for businesses to leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate go-to-market programmes, create stickier engagements with prospects and optimise operational efficiencies.
By making full use of generative AI innovations, businesses can increase content production significantly, double their inbound SEO traffic, focus sales development representatives on more valuable prospect-facing activities (as opposed to their spending hours in sales-enablement training) and lay the groundwork to shrink the time to localise a website into multiple languages.
Despite the hype surrounding the technology since OpenAI’s much-heralded release of ChatGPT, a recent study by Gartner revealed that fewer than half of business executives are currently investing in generative AI and, of those, only 30 per cent have moved beyond the initial, exploratory phase. This needs to change. Here are some of many ways in which businesses can use generative AI to realise impactful results almost immediately:
Product marketing: Using ChatGPT4, a marketing team can increase its rate of content creation – from ideation to delivery – by several hundred per cent. Assets can be leveraged directly by prospects and customers via your website, as well as by your sales teams when they engage with prospects and customers.
Sales enablement: A ChatGPT4 chatbot can be trained on existing content to enable sales development representatives (SDRs) to personalise conversations with prospects and customers and generate real-time answers to questions regarding your company’s capabilities from prospects and customers. Using the chatbot, SDRs can save countless hours of time in sales-enablement training.
Ask-me-anything chatbots: You can also use ChatGPT4-enabled chatbots trained on your existing content to engage with prospects for real-time, personalised conversations. You can even split the bot you use into different personas. For example, our company has Stu the Security Squirrel to engage with prospects on security-focused conversations and questions, while Calvin the Compliance Cow engages with prospects on compliance-focused conversations and questions.
Organic intent-based search: Businesses can use data-driven and AI-enabled SEO platforms, such as Quattr, to develop intent-based content that can significantly increase inbound organic search traffic by turbocharging content generation. Such tools can be used to produce high-quality, authoritative content that are published as ‘blog’ and ‘glossary’ resource articles relevant to your prospects.
Streamlined web content localisation: Traditional approaches to localising website content can be tedious, time-consuming and expensive. Yet, building a translation application programming interface (API) powered by ChatGPT4 can allow a marketing team to translate and publish individual webpages quickly and easily into multiple languages.
Multimedia to social media: Businesses can dramatically shrink the amount of time and cost it takes to create videos based on new blog posts, solution briefs and other content assets by ingesting them into an AI-enabled tool that automatically creates videos used for social media posts and captions for podcast episodes.
Driving brand awareness and engagement in today’s business landscape requires significant marketing resources just to break through the noise. Using generative AI, businesses can achieve astonishing increases in marketing outputs and exponential efficiency gains. Make sure that generative AI is a non-negotiable part of your business strategy now.
Diana Eisenberg is director of EMEA marketing at data privacy and compliance company Kiteworks
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From accelerating processes and catalysing change to uncovering potential treasure, AI can spur any organisation’s innovation cycle, says director of education at the Institute of Analytics Clare Walsh
Far from being the killer of all creative thought, AI can empower your innovative processes into tomorrow and beyond. AI is transformative, but its impact will depend on the model of innovation that you are using.
AI as an innovation accelerator
Some innovative processes require surveying a dataset so vast that innovation gets stifled. The pharmaceutical industry offers a good case in point. It has experienced a ‘discovery void’ since 1987 – almost 40 years – in the field of antibiotic drug discovery. Working through millions of potential compounds for one that is successful has resulted in a high failure rate that has historically made the entire drug research industry prohibitively expensive.
Today, Hoffman-La Roche has passed mammal testing with the first AI-identified antibiotic and is currently entering human clinical trials. The technology was used to produce a shortlist of candidates among the millions that appeared worthy of further investigation. Any time you are looking for a one in a thousand event, AI can bring competitive advantages in the early stages.
AI as a catalyst for change
When the rate of internal innovation falls behind the rate of external change, companies will get into trouble rapidly. The banking sector has quickly responded to a new, younger generation of customers following the introduction of banking data interoperability laws that have freed up this conservative sector for innovation. This might include omni-channel services, with a choice of webchat, email, human-to-human phone call, video call, or face-to-face service.
The younger generation are also said to be impatient and perceptions abound that putting them through multiple processes to reach a service will lose them quickly. AI can offer personalisation through an analysis of extensive customer records, reducing the steps needed to access a service.
In fields such as construction or manufacturing, people want fast, efficient results and the power of AI to reduce error can be a gamechanger. This means rethinking your relationship with customers and suppliers from a one-time sale to an ongoing partnership.
If you agree to share performance data on machinery delivered through sensors to a central data store, it’s also possible to track performance. Customers get early identification of problems, reducing downtime when there’s a fault and the supplier gets valuable feedback on the performance of their machine after the product has left the factory.
AI as the solution
As new AI tools leave laboratories and enter offices, a new innovation cycle begins. The generic generative AI large language model platforms, such as Llama or ChatGPT, are now being fine-tuned with domain-specific datasets. This means that they learn what matters in, say, the insurance field, allowing them to come up with more tailored responses.
We can use therefore these machines to help source datasets we don’t have or sift through relevant research. Provided that any staff involved are well trained in critical thinking, they will be able to look through the technology’s suggestions, remove the junk and focus on potential treasures. Using these tools creates efficiencies in the innovation stage and brings in outside voices. After all, knowledge of your business is a valuable thing, but sometimes a fresh idea from an external voice is essential.
We can also redirect old technologies to new problems now that they are more accessible to smaller businesses. Image recognition, for example, has been used at airports to reduce queues for almost a decade and that same technology is now starting to transform farming. Tractor manufacturers have trained their vehicles to scan fields of mixed crops and identify the crops from the weeds. The machines can then deliver a single drop of pesticide or fertiliser to the weeds and crops, as appropriate, when they are just one cm high. The result is far less chemical use, healthier crops and a move away from environmentally ruinous mono-crop farming – all by re-purposing a technology that was working reliably back in 2016.
Recommendations
However you choose to integrate AI in your innovation cycle, make sure you consider a couple of potential problems. It can be hard to wean your staff off legacy systems, so the earlier you involve your team in discussions, the better. It’s also essential to remember that error is almost always unavoidable and you need a critical approach and plan to deal with it, such as robust feedback loops. These problems are no different from human-based innovation, but a machine can only ever show you ‘what’ – you’re going to need a human to answer questions around ‘why’.
Clare Walsh is director of education at the Institute of Analytics and is one of the world’s leading academic voices in data analytics and AI. Having studied under Tim Berners-Lee and Wendy Hall, Walsh was also an academic tutor at the University of Southampton’s Data Science Academy and, during this time, worked for the UK government as a researcher within the Office of AI
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New research reveals that 57 per cent of students worldwide now expect their university to offer AI support tools. Managing director at Studiosity Isabelle Bristow delves deeper into the findings
New research reveals that 57 per cent of students worldwide now expect their university to offer AI support tools. Managing director at Studiosity Isabelle Bristow delves deeper into the findings
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming higher education at speed. However, integrating AI into the student journey from induction, teaching and learning to student outcomes, requires careful consideration of the pedagogical, ethical and disciplinary implications.
Academics who are positive towards AI are generally seeking to harness it for enhancing teaching and learning experiences, or evolve their discipline. Administrative and professional services colleagues, meanwhile, aim to understand the broader implications of AI in academic settings.
The expansion of generative AI’s capabilities was a big and widely discussed theme within higher education in 2023 that precipitated a year of fact-finding and planning. We now need 2024 to become a year of action.
Changing expectations
As complex institutions, universities and business schools acknowledge that speed of adoption can be an issue – and something that is exacerbated by student expectations. Increasingly, students from all demographics are proficient consumers of technology and bring assumptions over its use in day-to-day life into their study experience. More and more students are also engaged in employment while studying and the changing student experience, including that of international students in particular, is well documented and discussed.
So what do we know about student expectations for their institutions, focusing on AI-based support as a critical area of change and innovation?
Studiosity commissioned YouGov, as part of its Global Student Wellbeing Survey, to conduct research among students across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US, Singapore and UAE. The survey ran over five weeks in November and December and gained 10,189 responses, with 149 higher education institutions represented. Business students accounted for eight per cent of responses. Here are three key emerging themes from the study.
Students expect AI study support tools
In the UK, 39 per cent of students across all demographics now expect their institution to offer AI support tools (ie a trained, digital helper that gives personal feedback and other 24/7 study help) and this is consistent for all age groups.
Intriguingly, this proportion is significantly higher among international students in the UK (57 per cent) compared to their domestic counterparts (37 per cent). Business students are also more likely than those from other disciplines to want their university to innovate and provide AI support (57 per cent), compared to 29 per cent among students enrolled on subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Lastly, men are more likely (47 per cent) than women (35 per cent) to expect their university to provide AI-based support.
Worldwide, 57 per cent of students expect their university to offer AI support tools. Students in UAE and Saudi Arabia have some of the highest expectations in the world for this kind of learning assistance (84 per cent and 79 per cent, respectively).
Speed of feedback and improving confidence
Speed of feedback – ie “only waiting minutes, rather than a day or several days” – is the main reason that UK students would use their university’s AI support or feedback (26 per cent), followed by improving confidence, specifically to check they are “on the right track with their assignment’” (17 per cent).
Feedback speed and confidence-building reassurance are universally popular across all demographics of the students surveyed. The exception is that international students in the UK are slightly more likely to choose confidence over speed (22 per cent vs 21 per cent). Postgraduates have the highest amount of need for speed of feedback and support. As a large proportion of postgraduates are in full-time employment (38 per cent in this survey), this is perhaps unsurprising.
Feedback speed topped the list of desired use in most countries surveyed, apart from New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and UAE, where checking to see if they are on the right track was more prevalent. Further analysis shows that students who feel stressed, ranging from “more than a few times a year” all the way through to “constantly” (ie more than twice a day), also say speed of feedback would be the biggest driver for them to use AI support or feedback (26 per cent), followed by building confidence from being able to check they are on the right track (17 per cent).
Universities are not adapting quickly enough
Among UK students, 64 per cent say their university is not adapting quickly enough to integrate AI tools into their learning experience. This is also the picture outside the UK – 55 per cent of students in Australia and 60 per cent of those in Canada strongly perceive that their university is not adapting fast enough here.
UK respondents also revealed that a large number of students remain confused about what AI is and how it can be used in their educational setting. Many expressed concerns about the ethical use of AI, its reliability and the idea of AI potentially replacing human support. There were also reports of university-wide bans. However, while many students believe AI can play an ethical and valuable role in supporting their studies, they also felt that their university did not have this understanding yet and are being slow to react.
The launch of Studiosity’s new AI learning technology, Studiosity+, is designed to address these perceptions, with a focus on giving students formative feedback on their written work in minutes. Universities can see students’ progress, critical thinking development, pinpoint challenges and take next steps.
AI technology doesn’t just have the power to support all an institution’s students, it can also provide the kind of actionable insight that can instigate whole-institution change.
Isabelle Bristow is managing director for the UK and Europe at Studiosity
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Leaders are responsible for creating a supportive and collaborative workplace culture that can ensure the implementation of AI remains human-centred, says head of the school of leadership and management at Arden University Alison Watson
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once said “the development of full artificial intelligence (AI) could spell the end of the human race.” Without wanting to question one of the world’s greatest minds, I would argue this prediction outlines the ultimate ‘worst-case scenario’; a scenario where we lose human control over AI. However, in reality, we are far from experiencing that scenario today.
Hawking later followed this prediction with the notion that, if we use AI effectively, we should have faith that human intelligence will override the chances of AI-generated destruction. Indeed, human wisdom and innovation are critical to ensure we benefit from AI’s full potential as it continues to integrate into our everyday lives.
Before ChatGPT and Bard, an Infosys report revealed that 45 per cent of organisations globally believed their AI deployments were already significantly outpacing the productivity and accuracy of comparable human activity. AI adoption has accelerated at a rapid pace, leaving human power in urgent need of catching up to ensure AI is integrated efficiently, in a process-driven and cost-effective way.
In spite of this, it’s clear that AI has the potential to revolutionise the way we work – it can quicken mundane processes, analyse masses of data with ease and highlight potential issues before the human brain can detect them. As we’ve already seen, AI can – and is already – having a significant influence on business’ working environments, pushing leadership in a new direction. As a result, management teams are key to shaping the use of AI adoption in the workplace. They are the ones who must create strategic processes for AI’s adoption by developing strong visions and objectives to mould how the technology will enhance the workplace, alongside humans.
Changing leadership skills
When looking at AI adoption for leadership, research not only demonstrates the importance of stakeholder participation and transparency, but it also highlights how AI will ultimately lead to a shift in the requirements of leaders’ roles. With AI likely to replace some of the more ‘technical’ elements of leadership, such as data and information processing, greater emphasis will be placed on interpersonal skills and social competencies. This includes the personality traits, values, attitudes and behaviours that enable individuals to help others achieve a goal or shared purpose.
Despite concerns that certain roles will become obsolete due to AI, many future roles will be created by, and centred around, the fifth industrial revolution and workplace digitisation. In Arden University’s The 2030 Workforcereport, we found that 30 per cent of jobs are set to be eradicated as a result of automation and that this will result in business leaders needing a clear set of foundational skills. These revolve around digital, cognitive and interpersonal attributes, as well as self-leadership, including self-management, self-awareness and entrepreneurial ability. With AI, technological developments and automation all assisting the labour market, employee talent needs to complement digital advancements.
Ensuring AI remains human-centred
We’re already seeing the benefits technology can bring to the workplace. Being able to work remotely has revolutionised the way we work – and there is rightly more focus on the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. It has opened up new work opportunities for those with disabilities and has enabled parents to progress in their careers more easily.
To complement this, AI’s implementation and use needs to remain human-centred and that requires a supportive and collaborative workplace culture – something which leadership and management are responsible for creating. To develop this culture, a holistic mindset is crucial.
Technology, among many other things, will enable businesses to welcome more diversity to its teams. It will allow leaders to engage with people from a broader range of sectors and specialisms to continually inform their developing worldviews and broaden their horizons. This will adjust leaders’ perspectives, enabling them to build strong, long-lasting relationships with key stakeholders and reinforce their understanding of people across different cultures and backgrounds, supporting advocacy of diversity and flexibility.
As a result, the next generation of leaders and managers need to have a deeper understanding of people. They need to know how to successfully empower and get the most from their teams. They also need to have deep emotional and social intelligence, so that they can understand and predict the impact of their decisions on the people around them.
Alison Watson is Head of the School of Leadership and Management at Arden University in the UK. She has been part of the academic team at Arden for 17 years, supporting students on management courses at all levels, giving her a depth and breadth of experience
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The use of ChatGPT in education continues to divide opinion – some see it as a tool to complement teaching, while others think it is a threat to students’ ability to think critically.
One school that has embraced it is the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEN) at Andrés Bello University, where it has already been incorporated for analysis and problem-solving tasks in economics courses. To understand it further, faculty members were asked to reflect on its impact.
“ChatGPT could widen the skills and knowledge gap between different students,” said director of FEN’s Department of Economics and Administration Nicolás Garrido. “In the hands of students with a solid background, high motivation and discipline, it can significantly improve their knowledge and skills.
“However, for students who lack a good foundation, motivation or proper habits, the use of AI does not make a noticeable difference. It shows that the learning process is the result of the interaction between knowledge and the socio-emotional skills of students,” he added.
The biggest positive reported in the survey is ChatGPT’s ability to make tailored recommendations for students. “These became the starting point for an individualised strategy for each student,” Garrido revealed.
There were, however, some problems identified, notably that not all of ChatGPT’s applications are free. In addition, it has limited knowledge of anything taking place after September 2021, making it unreliable for connecting classroom learning to current affairs and the developing geopolitical situation.
This article originally appeared in the print edition (Issue 3 2023)of Business Impact, magazine of the Business Graduates Association (BGA)
From accelerating processes and catalysing change to uncovering potential treasure, AI can spur any organisation’s innovation cycle, says director of education at the Institute of Analytics Clare Walsh
New research reveals that 57 per cent of students worldwide now expect their university to offer AI support tools. Managing director at Studiosity Isabelle Bristow delves deeper into the findings
Can children’s literature create responsible citizens?
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Can children’s stories encourage the development of socially conscious mindsets? Ellen Buchan looks at some research from University of Agder
Classic children’s stories such as the Aesop fable The tortoise and the hare are often laced with lessons or hidden morals. Could they encourage kids to be kind to the environment?
Berit Huntebrinker, a researcher at the University of Agder recently completed a thesis on how four picture books for children and three comics portray humans’ relationship with nature. All the books and comics were created by Norwegian authors and illustrators and were published between 1974 and 2019. Huntebrinker noted that while some of the texts were directly educational, others left room for a conclusion to be sought by the reader.
One key theme to emerge from the majority of the books and comics examined was that the main character had to take responsibility for nature but had free will to choose how they wanted to solve any issues. The onus was on individual responsibility rather than collective responsibility.
This focus on individual responsibility did not surprise Huntebrinker. “Children’s books and popular literature are often simplified presentations and the individual is often the focus in popular literature,” she explained.
However, Det blå folket og karamell-fabrikken (1974), written by Tor Åge Bringsværd and illustrated by Thore Hansen, was found to have a greater emphasis on collective responsibility. The reason identified for this is that the book’s creators were critical of the political and social conditions in Norway at the time and were therefore interested in promoting a collective conscious.
“A nuanced reading is fruitful and necessary to fully appreciate the complexity of children’s literature, also when it comes to the presentation of different views about our responsibility for nature,” argued Huntebrinker.
The researcher’s conclusion is that while children’s authors agree that the way we behave towards nature needs to change, they do not agree on what those behaviours should be – a conundrum that has great applicability in the world of business and management.
This article originally appeared in the print edition (Issue 2 2023) of Business Impact, magazine of the Business Graduates Association (BGA).
The shift to renewable energy is the way the wind is blowing and business leaders must respond to these shifts, says Ruggero Gramatica from the University of Oxford’s Institute for New Economic Thinking
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How is AI already affecting the recruitment process, and what can we expect to see in the future? AI-oriented tech company, IPsoft, provides an overview.
What types of automation solutions are at the disposal of today’s recruitment teams? AI systems are already providing numerous options.
Traditionally, recruiters have often had to log into a system and manually identify the characteristics of ideal job candidates. With conversational AI, a recruiter can use natural language to ‘tell’ the system what type of candidate they are looking for, such as, ‘I’m looking for a compliance officer with at least five years of experience.’
Advanced AI systems can even generate relevant qualifying questions to further refine the search, such as those based on location or language proficiencies. Once the recruiter’s search has been created, the AI system will independently check through numerous candidate databases and job sites. As the system already knows the role requirements, only the most appropriate candidates are shared with the recruiter to take forward.
Augmenting effective recruitment from sift to interview
Talent acquisition is one of the key tasks for recruiters and one in which AI can play a transformative role, but there is no great need to change the way candidates apply for jobs. Ultimately, it’s augmenting the ability of recruiters to work effectively and build better relationships with prospective hires. Traditional recommendations for optimising CV and LinkedIn profiles to best highlight your skills and experience remain important – whether it’s an AI or human searching.
When it comes to the interview, AI software can also design interview questions that are personalised to the person’s professional competencies and experience. This approach helps both the candidate and recruiter. The candidate has the best opportunity to present and discuss their relevant experience and skills, helping the recruiter make better and more informed decisions. It can also help to reduce unconscious bias in questions, as the AI can be trained to disregard certain information and guide the recruiter away from questions that could have exposed a candidate to bias.
Between the search for great candidates, the time needed to conduct interviews, and the challenge of hiring top-tier employees, recruiting is very resource intensive. Many organisations – including Hilton and Unilever – already rely on AI to assist HR in the lengthy hiring process. From résumé screening to interviews, AI can help limit the time it takes to narrow down the pool of job seekers.
Stepping towards a hybrid workforce
Recruitment, and indeed HR as a whole, involves many routine tasks, making this an area of potential improvement through the use of AI-powered automation. From a business perspective, freeing up recruiters and HR professionals from high-volume – but not necessarily high-value – tasks, can allow them to address more complex individual needs across the business and apply their skills to other projects. This could include setting up a graduate training programme, building relationships with prospects, or researching and refreshing employee benefits schemes. Utilising AI in recruitment can help make these teams more productive, ultimately making jobs more interesting and rewarding.
In the long term, AI is going to fully automate tasks that human employees would rather not do, or simply do not have enough time to complete along with other, more important objectives. This is an important step towards the hybrid workforce, in which human and digital associates work alongside each other to help businesses scale faster with improved productivity and efficiency.
Covid-19 is becoming the accelerator for one of the greatest workplace transformations of our lifetime, with unprecedented changes in people’s day-to-day lives. What we are experiencing today could very well hasten this transition to a hybrid workforce and bring conversational AI into the workforce even sooner than anticipated.
Johan Toll is Executive Director of Transformations at IPsoft, a technology company focused on AI, cognitive and autonomic solutions.
Akil Benjamin, Co-Founder and Head of Research at COMUZI, was a keynote speaker at AMBA & BGA’s Business School Professionals Conference 2019 in Vienna, Austria. Here, he delves into the ethical implications of AI and offers tips for leaders working with rapidly emerging technology
Could you introduce yourself and the main topics covered in your presentation at AMBA & BGA’s Business School Professionals Conference?
I’m Head of Research at COMUZI, an innovation studio. We help people think about the future and build next-generation products, services and experiences, with a focus always on the people they are trying to serve.
The main topic of my presentation was consequence scanning; it was about asking AI the right questions. How we can demystify this technology? How can we make sure it gives us positive experiences? How do we amplify the positives while monitoring and mitigating the negatives?
These days, AI can decide whether or not you get a mortgage; whether or not a judge should give you jail time. It can also help you out when it comes to your healthcare needs, and predict the sentence you are typing on your phone. It is becoming ubiquitous.
Do the positives of AI outweigh the negatives?
Yes and no. It depends which side of the coin you look at. AI is only as smart as the person or team that programmed, developed and designed it. So we have to start by thinking about how we design these things and then identify the positives and negatives from that.
How can humans best work with this technology?
Technology has allowed us to do things much more rapidly. We can scan 300 million sources or candidates in a couple of minutes. It’s mind-boggling. But obviously, doing things this fast isn’t part of the human skill set. I believe that AI will show us the value of humanity: the things AI cannot do, such as making considered decisions, thinking about outcomes and taking time over things these are innately human skills.
What questions should we be asking AI?
How does AI impact the people it has been programmed to serve? Does it achieve your number-one goal? In achieving this goal, does it serve to marginalise, hurt, or have unintended consequences for a secondary group of people? If so, who are these people?
Play devil’s advocate and start thinking about what the impact could be. Decisions are not irreversible but, with AI, they are usually longstanding and hard to unpick. Let’s do our best to limit the number of poor decisions that are made in the first place.
Where do you think AI does not or cannot add value?
There will always be a need for human connections. I believe that AI is a tool, not a person; it facilitates doing something. As long as we stay connected and remember that AI is a tool rather than a proxy for human beings, I think we will be fine.
What are the ethical implications we need to consider?
Is AI reinforcing negative stereotypes or decisions? Is it reinforcing institutional divides or inequalities? Is it perpetuating injustices that people have been fighting over the past 20-100 years?
If so, AI isn’t being used for the right thing. But, if we’re using AI to deconstruct and reimagine a carefully thought-out future, we are taking progressive steps.
How can AI inform an authentic marketing strategy?
Let’s demystify AI. It’s not magic in a box, it’s a programme. Let’s start telling people the truth and educating them through our marketing messages so they can participate in the conversation and come along with us. I think the better people understand the technology, the more they will be able to engage with it.
In terms of how AI can influence marketing strategy, I believe it’s going to be another tool that we can leverage to gain a deeper insight into the messages we are putting out into the world. We might even get to the stage where AI is crafting that message. I should add that, to be ethical, we must be explicit about when we use AI technology in this way. People should know when they are talking to a computer and when they’re talking to a human.
What tips would you give leaders hoping to work with AI, to help them get started?
Don’t be too slow, but don’t rush into anything either: AI isn’t a band aid, it won’t fix all your problems. Take the time to work out where it will be most beneficial when implementing it in your business. It’s a tool, a narrow tool; it can’t do everything, but it can do specific things well. So take your time to define the specific things you want to do well and what these look like.
Second, talk to people in the organisation, especially those who are directly involved in the problem you are trying to address.
Third, ask yourself about the intended consequences of this, for the people you are looking to serve; keep reminding yourself that this is a tool and should not replace human relationships. Gather together people who can provide honest, unbiased perspectives. Having such people in the mix is important, especially when implementing powerful technology. ‘Yes men’ can be very detrimental to any project.
Is education evolving fast enough to deal with the effects of AI on the future of work?
No. The style of education, in my opinion, must change. Education needs to become more transactional. Currently, education is set up as a long-term investment: you set aside three years for a lifetime’s worth of learning. But with the world’s current rate of change, education needs to be more transactional. If I need to learn a specific core skill right now, I will need a 12-week course. In six months’ time, the technology may have changed. If I do enough of those courses I might gain a qualification; or perhaps I’ll have a series of qualifications in specific things. I think that’s how education needs to direct itself.
I would have had multiple degrees by now had I had the time to take formal qualifications in everything. I couldn’t afford to invest that time, I just had to learn what I had to learn and implement it. I think education has to evolve, recognising skills learned on the job as well as bringing in people who have acquired their skills in this way.
The Artificial Intelligence in Management (AIM) Institute at France’s Emlyon Business School is studying real-world issues facing organisations, in an interdisciplinary way. David Woods-Hale speaks to AIM’s Executive Director, Renaud Champion, to find out more
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a talking point among Business School leaders for years, as institutions grapple with the most effective ways of preparing students to operate in the world of robotics. Renaud Champion, Executive Director of the AI in Management (AIM) Institute at Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France, tells us how his School is addressing the challenge.
What does your role as AIM’s Executive Director involve?
My mission is to design and implement the School’s AI strategy at every level, from research to pedagogical content and the development of digital tools.
Given my background as an entrepreneur and an investor in AI and robotics, I have experienced how these technologies are already impacting companies dramatically, in terms of the way work is organised and done, and how they create value. The DNA of the Institute was therefore based around two main questions, which seemed both obvious and relevant from a Business School perspective: how can AI generate value; and how is AI impacting work and governance?
I developed the AIM Institute eight months ago, as a startup within the Business School, to galvanise interest in, and action around, this strategy. But to be successful, a good startup needs the right team, so involving recognised researchers in this ambitious initiative was a first key step.
After only a few months and thanks to the work of the AIM Research Directors, Professor Ruthanne Huising and Professor Margherita Pagani, we already had 20 researchers from different backgrounds involved and were expanding quickly. We could also count on the involvement of Emlyon’s Scientific Committee, made up of leading academics from Stanford, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), University of Texas at Austin, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Florida State University and the University of Southern California, to help us. At this point, it was necessary for me to start working on initial outputs as well as ensuring AIM’s activities gained visibility. To this end, we created a series of seminars and research conferences for our various audiences, plus new pedagogical modules for our students.
What disruptive trends are you observing around AI and its impact on higher education and work?
Our aim at the Business School is to prepare tomorrow’s managers and leaders to work in a technology-driven world. At the same time, it is also the responsibility of each manager – not just of the chief operating officer or chief technology officer – to ask themselves: ‘How can AI help me do my job more efficiently or differently?’
But to do this, managers need to be trained in these technologies, in design thinking methodologies, agility and so on. Companies need to invest in AI but also in their own people to get the most out of these technologies. This is why Emlyon includes courses on data, robotics and machine learning, and on the impact of these technologies on companies, in all its programmes.
It is important for us, as a Business School, to ensure our programmes are increasingly hybrid. However, AI is also transforming pedagogy itself. We are building new AI-augmented tools to support our students in their lifelong learning journey. Digital can help us personalise that experience.
Can you provide some background to the launch of AIM?
Over the past 20 years of working and investing in AI and related technologies, I have been involved in several different projects impacting various markets and sectors, from finance and agriculture, to transport and healthcare.
This experience convinced me that AI is not only an economic opportunity, but also a social opportunity, because it can add value by putting humankind back at the heart of things. Researchers, engineers and product managers must be trained to become ever-more ethically responsible when they design, deploy or use emerging AI technologies. These principles are at the core of the AIM Institute. Our ambition is to understand the world in its complexity; build knowledge from it by taking an interdisciplinary approach, and disseminate this to various audiences in adapted formats, with the use of an omnichannel pedagogy.
Why are there so few empirical studies looking at how AI will impact the workplace?
I believe the reason why there are many predictions about how AI will change business and the way we work, but relatively few empirical studies, is mostly due to companies’ late appropriation of recent AI-driven technologies which are still seen as not being mature enough.
Most companies are still in the middle of their digital transformation and it is difficult for many to look ahead to the AI revolution. But it is coming, and it’s already affecting sectors such as healthcare and transport. Our first goal within the Institute is to work with companies on real-world problems and to support grounded, empirical studies of the way AI can create value around a broad range of business issues, as well as how this technology is changing what it means to work and the way work is organised, done and rewarded.
Can you talk us through the AIM Institute’s priorities of research, innovation and dissemination?
We aim to understand the opportunities and implications of AI for managing organisations, industries and business ecosystems. With this in mind, we have launched several series of seminars and workshops with leading scholars from around the world to address questions exploring the impact of AI on work and value creation, and organise monthly outreach lectures, open to the public, about the technologies behind AI in order to demystify and educate broadly.
On the pedagogical side, we have created an online certificate in AI and business for managers, new courses within our fields of expertise to be integrated into all of Emlyon’s programmes (at bachelor’s, master’s, MBA, and executive education levels), and post regular presentations on the School’s YouTube channel.
How complex is this type of implementation for Business Schools operating in a constantly changing and disrupted tech environment?
As in any other industry, in education we need to adapt constantly and cope with the latest technological breakthroughs. This requires a high level of agility around understanding technologies and being able to anticipate their impact, and this includes identifying the business and organisational issues that could emerge. Our approach is strongly interdisciplinary, so we address different variables across marketing, strategy, sociology and ethnography, alongside technology and ethics.
By building innovative pedagogical solutions based on digital and AI, we are questioning Emlyon’s mission as a School. All these new functionalities challenge the role of the professor. What can algorithms optimise and what should stay in the hands of the teacher? The question of how technology can be used to complement human skills also needs to be tackled in our domain of higher education.
How does your initiative work in practice and why is this a good example of how Business Schools and employers can work collaboratively to address issues such as AI?
On the research side, we have several studies under review by top academic journals and are working on new projects studying human-machine interaction; the impact of smart devices on the supply chain and operations; new business models derived from AI-augmented digital platforms, and how to design and create better user experiences through interactions with new technology.
These projects are interdisciplinary and address real business issues faced by organisations. Working closely with employers in an empirical way is a methodology we favour in order to anchor our actions in the real world. It means we can guarantee that we are relevant and impactful when disseminating this knowledge through pedagogy. We are also working on the creation of our technology transfer department. For every research project, we consider whether the work has the potential to contribute to our understanding of how organisations and institutions can take meaningful and responsible advantage of AI. For example, where we identify projects that have concrete business applications, we could develop patentable models that could be coded and used to develop an application that a partner organisation might find useful. Alternatively, we might explore the possibility of launching and supporting a startup to build on this innovation.
What are the implications of AI for labour markets, organisational design and governance and how can the AIM Institute make an impact here?
Thanks to embedded AI, robots are becoming more intelligent and can work safely alongside human workers. Machines will complement people in the workplace rather than competing with them, and this combination will speed up processes, make things easier for humans and enable people to add human value.
For instance, in automotive factories 10 to 15 years ago, there were huge industrial robots operating behind security fences. But now the robots are becoming more intelligent and are being taken out of cages. Humans are back on the production line and are now operators of robots. From a business perspective, AI can help workers by automating dull, difficult, dangerous, or repetitive tasks.
In addition, AI-augmented systems, when combined with human operators, are always more efficient than human experts alone, or even machines alone. There is a healthcare study which shows that AI analysing a patient’s tumour will not perform as well as a human doctor. But if you combine the human doctor with an AI algorithm, the analysis is a lot more effective.
AI can also be helpful in providing other diagnostic information that doctors can use to make better decisions about patient care. It won’t just be the healthcare sector that has to manage this balancing act, all areas will be affected.
Companies have no choice but to adapt and identify how they can use these technologies for their benefit, from both an economic and people perspective. Some jobs will disappear while new ones will be created.
But rather than focusing on the numbers on each side, I think we need to understand how the whole structure of employment is being transformed by AI: most jobs won’t disappear, they will evolve. This is exactly what the AIM Institute is looking at: understanding how AI will transform the way organisations operate, how they are governed and how they recruit.
Your goal is to create and implement practical solutions from the research – what format will these take?
Everything starts with research. Through our research projects, we generate knowledge. This knowledge will be published in respected academic journals, but it is also the raw material with which we can develop our teaching.
To do this, we will need to translate the research projects and findings into pedagogy, and this requires some engineering. When we talk about innovation within the AIM Institute, it is used first and foremost (but not only) from a pedagogical perspective.
The technology-transfer mechanism, which is most often used in technical universities to build on their research, is something we want to implement. It might not always be possible, but our goal is for the team to consider each opportunity in turn, and in connection with our corporate partners as and where appropriate.
What are the next steps?
We are now entering an acceleration phase and looking to expand globally – first into central and east Asia and Africa, where
Emlyon Business School already has a strong presence, and then into India. We are also recruiting post-doctorates and assistant professors to open up new fields of knowledge around AI’s impact.
We are also finalising online certificates and designing new courses for students. Last but not least, we are working on a new series of seminars, conferences and workshops for the coming academic year. It is an exciting time for us, working on a very exciting subject.
Renaud Champion is the Executive Director of the AI in Management (AIM) Institute and Director of Emerging Intelligences at Emlyon Business School, France. He is also Director of euRobotics AISBL, the European Association of Robotics.
MIP Politecnico di Milano has developed an AI-infused career-coaching tool to help students gain new skills faster and boost their employability, explains Federico Frattini
As the education sector booms, universities are being forced to think further outside the box to attract the best students. Courses that are not flexible, personal and relevant to the increasing digitisation of many jobs and workplaces are simply being left behind. New demands from students about how courses are taught, as well as their content, are making the industry increasingly competitive and putting more pressure on the educational systems in place. The goal for students is not just to graduate, but to be truly employable, by gaining a set of skills that will be relevant now and in the workplace of the future.
Practically all universities will have witnessed the market widening over the past few years, with a new demographic of potential students looking to continue their lifelong learning and keep abreast of ongoing technological advances. The World Economic Forum reports that 65% of primary school students will be doing jobs that don’t yet exist when they graduate.
From this perspective, acquiring new skills is important, not only for young people, but also for those wishing to remain competitive in their industry and grow in their professional life or current position. In fact, according to Vanessa Byrnes, Sector Managing Director at global talent management consultancy, Alexander Mann Solutions, upskilling has never been more vital. She explains: ‘In our experience, retraining and redeploying internal resources is one of the most efficient ways of bridging future skills gaps. When faced with the option to “buy, build or borrow” expertise, growing your own talent comes with numerous benefits, not least the retention of culture and reduced recruitment costs.’
A career coach for students and alumni
Fresh technologies must be made available to empower everybody with new capabilities. Research suggests that AI, as well as a plethora of other new technologies, will directly impact a huge number of jobs worldwide, so real-life experience is critical in both understanding and adapting to these advances. For MIP Politecnico di Milano, using AI in education is important both for our schools and our students.
That’s why we have launched FLEXA, an AI continuous learning platform which acts as a career coach for potential students, current cohorts and alumni networks.
The basic idea is to give our students the knowledge they need to achieve their career goals faster and make them more employable. Developed in partnership with Microsoft, FLEXA analyses each individual and suggests personalised material that can close skills gaps while promoting their profiles to recruiters.
So, how does it work? To begin, users undergo a short assessment of their hard, digital and soft skills. This, combined with details of their personal career aspirations, helps to identify courses, tutorials, digital material, MOOCs, and even the best mentors and coaches to help enhance their capabilities.
FLEXA can be accessed by current students, alumni and potential students alike, mapping out their next logical steps to close skills gaps at all levels of their career. Each individual’s data is then set against job skills required by the market and FLEXA allows a number of top recruiters to access the profiles of both students and alumni.
FLEXA uses Microsoft’s cloud service and AI platform, Cortana Intelligence, which Silvia Candiani, Microsoft Italy’s General Manager describes as an ‘innovative continuous learning tool’. She says it is ‘fully aligned with Microsoft’s culture of continuous skills updating and its mission of empowering every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. The goal is upskilling, the improvement of people’s employability, and (for it to act) as an enabler of innovation and digital transformation’.
AI in Education | Personalising the student experience
InnoInnovations like these are the first step in accelerating a transformation in education. Matching curricula with aspirations is one side of the coin, but it becomes a larger, more targeted operation when employers get involved. This creates the perfect platform to match supply and demand, providing critical information to fine-tune curriculum development. This is likely to transform the curriculum from a top-down, education system-led model to a bottom-up, or market-led one, while still working on students’ terms.
One of the key benefits of AI in education is that it allows users to personalise the student learning journey, an important factor for those selecting which MBA or master’s degree to undertake. The changing role of business schools means they must now curate knowledge and broker content for students and alumni at exactly the right time in their careers. It appears that management education is becoming less about imparting ‘know-how’ to the next generation of business minds than focusing on ‘know-where’ – the critical ability to source knowledge from different media. FLEXA is designed to do just that.
The implications of using technology such as FLEXA are far-reaching. One advantage is the wealth of data that can be collected from recruiters using the technology, many of which systematically develop talent for future roles. As Byrnes explains: ‘In order to know what skills need to be developed to ensure an organisation is future-fit, leaders need to map capabilities against project demand.’
In this way, data collected from AI in EdTech will provide insights into what employers are really searching for, as well as the knowledge that allows students to reach career targets. This is invaluable for the education system, which can start to anticipate and follow shifting demands in the real business world for the first time. Key to understanding how to close rapidly growing, global skills gaps, this service could even be offered without an accompanying degree, strengthening the digital capabilities and soft skills of individuals, regardless of whether they are business school students. This is an indication of potential societal impact.
In adIn addition, the system also encourages intelligence-based networking between individuals, allowing collaborative learning and skills building, as well as connecting people with mentors. This is a tremendous advantage to students who are exposed to situations where they must develop soft skills such as problem-solving, verbal communication and adaptability.
According to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report, executives now consider these skills key to employee retention, improving leadership and building a meaningful culture. In fact, 92% of Deloitte’s respondents rated soft skills as a critical priority. As technologies such as AI and robotics are increasingly capable of completing automated and analytical tasks, business minds of the future must develop their ability to work effectively alongside and in synergy with these systems, as well as nurture the qualities that tech does not possess.
Growth of online education and the need for flexibility
The number of online courses being offered by business schools is increasing, as is the number of applicants to them. A 2018 report published by the Babson Survey Research Group suggests the number of US students who enrolled in at least one online course rose by 5.6% between 2015 and 2016, a faster rate than the three previous years. Jeff Seaman, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group and a co-author of the study, expects this trend to continue and that data for 2017 will mark 15 consecutive years of enrolment growth. At MIP, flexible learning with the student at the core of the programme is part of the School’s ethos. In the past few years, we have been experiencing a radical change in the needs of professionals interested in post-graduate training who, besides an increasing need for flexibility and the compatibility of educational programmes with their agenda, are demanding a highly personalised and concrete learning experience. MIP has responded to this need with a dedicated educational offering revolving around the concept of smart learning, which combines digital learning tools with personal coaching, mentoring and advisory services.
In 2012, the School began adopting emerging technologies in higher education, with its first digital executive MBA launched in 2014. It was so successful that we had to launch a new edition of the programme every six months. Today, there are domestic and international executive MBA digital offerings, the Flex and International Flex Executive MBAs, which allow participants to decide where and how to access their lesson material, from anywhere in the world and with any device. This means that their learning fits around other commitments, and is part of the School’s wider digital strategy to use tech to enhance learning capabilities. In 2016, the Flex EMBA was shortlisted for the MBA Innovation Award in the annual AMBA Excellence Awards. FLEXA further enhances the School’s educational offerings and operates entirely online, making it accessible to all users, at any time.
Advances in technology mean the traditional education framework will soon become as anachronistic as the notion of knowledge acquisition occurring merely through a textbook, or in a discussion. The best people in each field are becoming aware that they must implement AI in education in order to get ahead. If business schools don’t innovate and cater to this growing demographic, they are likely to see potential students applying elsewhere. In order to remain valuable, institutions must rise to the challenge of engaging alumni meaningfully, encouraging them to see the value in lifelong learning. By failing to take advantage of AI to empower the next generation, universities are not arming current – or future – generations of business minds with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed.
Federico Frattini is Associate Dean of Digital Transformation at MIP Politecnico di Milano.
