Friday at Friflex

Friday at Friflex

Last Friday, I visited the Friflex office with the Digital Business Leaders community. AI—seemingly everywhere these days—was billed as the main topic, but we actually discussed much more than AI alone.

To begin with, I was pleased to see far more members of the community at this meeting than usual. Perhaps that was because many people knew—or, like me, sensed—that visiting Friflex would feel like being at home. In the end, having professionals from different industries in the room sparked a lively discussion.

As it happened, I spoke not once, but twice:

• In my first talk, I shared my experience of deploying AI with IBM Watson back in 2017;
• In the second, I spoke about my experience of using an AI agent from OpenAI. My colleagues found it so interesting that Taras Soroka invited me to record a video podcast with him on the subject. It will be the first podcast I have ever appeared on, but I am sure that an expert like Taras will teach me the ropes and that we will do ourselves proud.

As we exchanged views, I discovered several things that I had either not known or not considered before:

• In some fields, it is very difficult to quantify the impact of introducing AI.
• In areas where that impact can be measured fairly well, end customers often prohibit anyone from disclosing information about the project. This is frequently because they do not want to give their direct competitors any clues. Or because they are uncomfortable revealing just how bad things were beforehand.
• If a company’s processes are far from perfect, introducing AI will have no positive effect—even in an area where AI can almost be deployed as an off-the-shelf solution. Flawed processes will undermine the entire logic of how the AI works.

In other respects, the views were much as expected:

• AI is not a magic button that makes everything better the moment you press it;
• Before AI, there was automation, computerisation, nanotechnology and blockchain—but none of them turned the world into “one big television screen”. AI will not do so either. It is simply one tool among many.

All in all, the Friday office meetup was a resounding success. A huge thank-you to the organisers! And special thanks to Friflex for the welcoming venue and warm atmosphere!