Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce hosted business leaders at a private roundtable to discuss ‘Augmented Intelligence: Balancing People, Processes and AI’.
The event, which was held in partnership with British Chambers of Commerce and IBM UK Ltd, examined the practical aspects of embedding AI into day-to-day operations, including culture, ethics and governance. The attendees, who represented a wide range of businesses, shared their insights and experience of using AI in their own businesses.
Opening the meeting, Chris Fletcher, Policy Director at Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, explained that the event would explore how people, processes and AI could come together to addresses issues such as ethics, risk and sustainability.
Sven Strassburg, IBM Principal Solution Architect, Europe, set the scene for the discussion by talking about his experience of helping clients navigate AI from an operational point of view. He said AI was often “technology looking for a solution” and that many people felt they had to “start a project on AI” without thinking about what they wanted to achieve.
He pointed out that discussion in the media about AI usually focused on the risks it posed to people’s jobs rather than the benefits it would bring to those jobs. “The question should be will AI make my job better? not will AI make me redundant?” he said. He added that AI systems had been reported in the news as being biased, however humans are also open to interpret data with a bias too.
The issue of who owns your data was discussed and it was revealed that some businesses even had to buy back their own data because they were unaware what they had signed up for in the Terms and Conditions.
The carbon footprint of data centres was highlighted as a major issue because of the amount of water and energy they consume, with many centres based in energy rich but water poor areas. Sven pointed out, however, that all new technologies had the same problems at first in that they consumed too much water and too much energy, but these problems were later overcome through further innovation.
Attendees felt that one of the main issues with implementing AI was that employees feared for their jobs because they didn’t know what AI could do, so there needed to be more awareness raising around the technology and an important focus on leadership and management. Legislation to cover AI was also discussed but the attendees felt it was hard to legislate when the technology was developing so fast. It was also pointed out that there was a need to educate legislators about AI not just lobby them.
In conclusion, Chris Fletcher said the main points discussed could be summarised as “it’s not the AI that will replace your job, but the person who understands how to use AI” and “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should”.
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