Ensuring productive partnerships between organizational end-users and increasingly intelligent software tools is critical to generative AI strategy success. Expect a rocky relationship in need of coaching and coaxing. In the rush to establish technical strategies for making good on the promise of generative AI, many CIOs find themselves running headlong into what may be their most challenging task yet: preparing their organization’s end-users — from knowledge workers and assembly line laborers to doctors, accountants, and lawyers — to co-exist with generative AI. Although many analysts, thought leaders, vendors, and chief executives view and position large language models (LLMs) and tools such as Microsoft Copilot as assisting rather than replacing workers, the flood of generative AI products that have hit the market and speedy implementation of LLMs in production to perform many human tasks has challenged that argument, outlining a complex relationship between artificially intelligent machines and the humans who must work with them. Given the disruptive potential of generative AI, the stakes are high, as Reuven Cohen, strategic AI advisor to Baxter International, a Fortune 500 company, points out. “The struggle is augmenting your workforce or replace it altogether,” he says. “Step one is likely a question of empowering the most capable people in your organization with highly tailored AI; the next step is removing the less capable altogether.” But what will be defined as ‘less capable’ will likely be impacted by the technology’s evolution, as well as the evolution of human-machine partnerships wherever the technology is implemented.
Full story : CIOs confront generative AI’s workplace X factor.
