When I wrote Leadership In the Age Of Algorithm two and a half years ago, the promise of AI was well ahead of its performance. Today, we are seeing performance close the gap with many forecasting peril for people, businesses, and institutions. You’ve seen the headlines:

• AI will make knowledge workers redundant
• AI will do to white collar jobs what robotics did to blue collar
• ChatGPT will do to writing what the calculator did to math

While it’s still early days with AI tools like ChatGPT, let’s not lose sight of the fact that AI is a tool. As with any tool invented – from the lever to the supercomputer – the intent was to lighten our workload, and they did. They changed they way we worked, for the better. Tools killed certain jobs, but new and better jobs were born. According to a report from the Foundation for Economic Education, technology has created more jobs that it has destroyed.  

In that piece, I wrote, “While technology may create speed and enable faster transactions; it’s people who create exceptional client experiences and moments that matter that stick with us long after the interaction.” I still believe that to be true.

Rather than peril, what if we looked for the opportunity? What if we asked, how might we use AI to:

• Reframe our view of constraints?
• Create more meaningful experiences for customers?
• Create more meaningful work for our people?
• Do what we were unable to do before?

The nature of work will shift again, and we will need strong leadership to bring context and perspective to what we do to create meaningful stakeholder experiences. Nuance, empathy, and discernment will be essential. Perhaps more than ever.