Threat is all about context
Threat is all about context. In actual fact, one of many largest dangers is failing to acknowledge or perceive your context: That’s why you must start there when evaluating threat.
That is significantly essential when it comes to status. Suppose, as an illustration, about your clients and their expectations. How would possibly they really feel about interacting with an AI chatbot? How damaging would possibly or not it’s to supply them with false or deceptive info? Perhaps minor buyer inconvenience is one thing you possibly can deal with, however what if it has a major well being or monetary influence?
Even when implementing AI appears to make sense, there are clearly some downstream status dangers that have to be thought of. We’ve spent years speaking in regards to the significance of consumer expertise and being customer-focused: Whereas AI would possibly assist us right here, it might additionally undermine these issues as effectively.
There’s an identical query to be requested about your groups. AI could have the capability to drive effectivity and make folks’s work simpler, however used within the unsuitable method it might severely disrupt current methods of working. The business is speaking so much about developer expertise just lately—it’s one thing I wrote about for this publication—and the selections organizations make about AI want to enhance the experiences of groups, not undermine them.
Within the newest version of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar—a biannual snapshot of the software program business based mostly on our experiences working with purchasers around the globe—we speak about exactly this level. We name out AI team assistants as probably the most thrilling rising areas in software program engineering, however we additionally word that the main target must be on enabling groups, not people. “Try to be searching for methods to create AI staff assistants to assist create the ‘10x staff,’ versus a bunch of siloed AI-assisted 10x engineers,” we are saying within the newest report.
Failing to heed the working context of your groups might trigger vital reputational harm. Some bullish organizations would possibly see this as half and parcel of innovation—it’s not. It’s displaying potential staff—significantly extremely technical ones—that you just don’t actually perceive or care in regards to the work they do.
Tackling threat by way of smarter expertise implementation
There are many instruments that can be utilized to assist handle threat. Thoughtworks helped put collectively the Responsible Technology Playbook, a set of instruments and methods that organizations can use to make extra accountable selections about expertise (not simply AI).
Nonetheless, it’s essential to notice that managing dangers—significantly these round status—requires actual consideration to the specifics of expertise implementation. This was significantly clear in work we did with an assortment of Indian civil society organizations, growing a social welfare chatbot that residents can work together with of their native languages. The dangers right here weren’t in contrast to these mentioned earlier: The context through which the chatbot was getting used (as assist for accessing very important companies) meant that wrong or “hallucinated” info might cease folks from getting the assets they rely upon.