Using the beginner’s mindset to navigate the AI landscape and continue to streamline business systems

Published: 9th September, by Louise Dougan, Valterum

The topic of AI is ubiquitous at the moment. Its transformative potential for business and society appears in our daily news feeds and is changing how we work and live.  The race is also on to create the first genuinely AI-powered personal assistant through the likes of Google's Gemini-powered prototype assistant, Astra, and Microsoft's OpenAi GPT40, which sits behind Microsoft's own aptly named Copilot, and the more extensive quest for creating the world’s first Artificial General Intelligence, but what does this mean for businesses grappling with the everyday challenges of building and running businesses? What does it mean for the daily business systems and processes that help businesses grow and scale effectively, and how can we all keep learning and evolving our use of AI technology in pursuing business and digital transformation? 

Lessons in the future

It’s something that’s formed a big part of my thinking and my own learning and development over the last year and continues to impact the work I’m doing. In the summer of 2023, I spent more time than usual in and around London's ‘Tech Roundabout’, around Old Street and Shoreditch, where many high-tech businesses and startups are building the future.  It got me thinking about how I was using AI in the work that I was doing with my clients and in my own business. I stumbled upon the aptly named Brainstation's London campus, located just a stone's throw away from the famous Tech Roundabout.

I started exploring Brainstation's training offered to become better skilled and more attuned to AI and to learn how to harness it effectively to support my work and the work that I do with my clients. Following further research and discussions, I signed up for Brainstation's Artificial Intelligence Course, which I completed earlier this year in March. 

Both during the course and since then, I've been working with some of my clients on smaller projects and initiatives to streamline existing processes and, where feasible, harness the power of AI to support the growth and development of their business systems.

Revolution and evolution 

One of the biggest challenges facing businesses is the revolutionary impact that AI is having and will continue to have over the coming years. Commentators and companies have billed it as the fourth industrial revolution and a significant inflection point for humanity. Bringing that back to an individual and day-to-day business level, the challenge that I've become aware of both from a company and a personal level is avoiding swallowing the elephant.  

This came up in a recent discussion with an old mentor. I highlighted my concerns about the need to keep learning and developing my knowledge and learning in the AI space and discipline while avoiding going down too many rabbit holes along the way. The more I've read and listened to on the subject, particularly over the summer months, the more I've realized that this is a broader challenge that even the most experienced tech leaders face daily. 

The power of the beginner's mindset

Some of those challenges were very neatly and eloquently captured and considered in a recent interview with Clara Shih, the CEO of Salesforce AI, on McKinsey's At the Edge Podcast. Clara promoted the benefits of adopting a 'beginners mindset' when using, learning about, and deploying generative AI.  

I've generally taken that approach when learning about, deploying, and using various tech products over the course of my career and, more recently, in my approach to exploring AI and its uses for my clients and in my work generally.  

In one smaller recent project with a client, we worked together to look at different AI options and solutions for streamlining the process of fielding and triaging emails to ensure the right level of response at the relevant time, depending on the nature of the email. As with many AI solutions, we found several limitations around using the existing technology. The resulting solution we chose used built-in AI for the existing platform, which is one of the areas that seems to be gathering the most momentum and where real efficiency gains appear to be growing. 

From finding things quickly in-app, processing and analyzing large amounts of data, or promptly generating text and content to reducing time spent doing the routine is the focus and power of the large language model. That's where we need to keep the focus, using that ever-beneficial beginner's mindset, to continue to look for new ways to use this fast-developing technology. 

Where to go next, and what are the hidden pitfalls and risks?

We all continue to 'watch this space' and keep learning as the apps we use continue to develop their AI prowess. The major proprietary LLMs continue to grow in intelligence and, perhaps, empathy, as some leaders in the field are now suggesting, in the quest for Artificial General Intelligence. In this area, we all have to commit to pushing for regulation and doing what we can to ensure that we manage the technology's risks to society if it’s abused or used for more sinister and harmful purposes.

That’s the stark warning from Mustafa Suleyman, the renowned British AI Entrepreneur, who is now leading Microsoft AI. I’m still reading his bestselling book, The Coming Wave, and it’s an important message that he carries in the book and something we all need to take heed of as we learn to evolve our use of technology, both individually and collectively. It’s a theme that we need to keep exploring and always keep in mind, and thankfully, one that continues to be explored by other leading authors and thinkers, as highlighted in a recent FT article exploring some of the most recent publications on the topic.

I look forward to continuing to learn and use technology in new ways to support my clients. I’m excited to see how it can be practically used to solve some of the world’s and society’s biggest problems, as well as the day-to-day business efficiencies that it can deliver in the ongoing quest for unlocking growth and delivering value. With the growing risk of cyber security threats, the potential for abuse, and the pace at which AI is evolving, it’s clear that the need to keep learning and maintain a beginner’s and growth mindset while understanding and managing the changing risks around deployment becomes ever more crucial.

That’s where I firmly intend to keep the focus, and it’s on this basis that I’ll keep working to explore the evolving technology across all my projects. How do you use AI in your business processes, systems, and operations? If you’re keen to discuss further, get in touch.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash