The GenAI Insight Series will explore a series of lenses through which to consider the impacts and opportunities of Generative AI. Building on the work shared in ‘Engines of Engagement: a curious book about Generative AI’, we will explore fourteen aspects impact the future of work and our learning and leadership within that context.

Proliferation

Nobody knows this full story: as Generative AI technologies have streamed from labs and studios into the mainstream, they have been accompanied by a pattern of commentary that ranges from the technical to the political, from expert to simply opinionated. Hyperbole and individual certainty duel with insight and curiosity.

But nobody knows the full story, because the boundaries are not in place, and we have barely turned the first page.

Speed of Understanding

When presented with something new, the first thing we seek is context. Which box do I put this thing in? Is it a new coffee machine, a new App, a new book title, or a new belief system? Our taxonomies for the world around us keep us safe, because they keep us from confusion. When things don’t fit neatly, they tend to cause concern.

In this sense, it’s easy to leap to certainty fast with Generative AI, using a combination of the common sense borne out of our experience, and the primary narratives that we hear surrounding us.

Through this lens, Generative AI is a technology, or even more specifically from a user perspective, a website or App, or possibly a magic demon embedded in to the heart of other things that we use. It’s interesting, but understandable.

And what type of technology is it? Well clearly it fits into a category that I understand: it’s a glorified search engine, with a bit of personality about it. And it’s a mystical engine oil that makes things I already know a little bit better (or more clever).

Speed of understanding is important, because without it I may look foolish (when all my friends know what it means), or I may be at risk (when my boss asks me a pertinent question about it).

If I listen to the primary narratives, I will include certain cautions about bias, about hallucinations, about fallibility. And then I can take comfort in my certainty and mastery.

Anyone who is ‘plugged in’ will rapidly come to realise that this primary understanding is too narrow.

It’s not enough to consider Generative AI without also taking a stance on whether it will change everything, or change nothing. Is it something ‘big and paradigmatic’, or ‘small and manageable’. Our position here may be influenced by our nature, as optimists or pessimists, and by the voices that surround us. But again, once we have claimed our space, it’s time to move on.

Many of us find our ‘speed of understanding’ is a relatively rapid thing, not least because it is a finely honed skill. Almost every day we hear about something new and need to take a position on it: which political view we support, which plan or strategy, whose side of an argument, where we should focus our efforts next. Endless prevarication or faff does not serve us well: make a decision, move forwards, show no weakness.

Speed of Understanding has served us well in many ways, but may not do so when it comes to Generative AI, because, as I said at the start, this story is not yet written. And a primary understanding that is too narrow may constrain us future insight and potential.

Overall we can consider two main contexts of Generative AI in the wild: the first is the context in which it optimises those things we already do, and the second is in which it enables us to do entirely new things.

Many existing platforms and technologies are baking in new AI features (partly as a marketing approach, partly for fear of being left out, partly to strip out their own costs and complexity, and partly to deliver new features and functionality). These are all well and good and operate in the known marketplace of commerce and ideas.

Other players are using Generative AI to entirely negate legacy systems, features, segments, operations, and ideas. These often asymmetric efforts are not necessarily within existing domains, but will often challenge existing domains.

There is a wild proliferation of these ideas, which will do anything from helping you to make music through to coaching you to be a better leader.

From There To Here

An interesting consideration in our lens of Understanding is the location of the benefits: Generative AI is an inherently mobile feature. It brings expertise, insight, dialogue and capability to wherever you happen to be standing right now.

This mobility is signifiant in terms of a broader feature of the Social Age, in that Generative AI fractures relationships between space and power.

The formal spaces of offices, and features of infrastructure and networks, hark from a previous age in which Organisations formed the backbone of capability, and infrastructure was expensive, complex, and owned. But no longer. For many, the Organisation that they work for is now a transient feature, a matter of enjoyment and convenience today, but not forever.

Employment no longer carries the security, permanence, status, or comfort that it once did. And it no longer gives us as much as it used to either.

Infrastructure has become increasingly democratised and distributed as has much technology of productivity, insight and effectiveness. The proliferation of distributed computing, personally owned, of App based services and Software as Service, in parallel with the rise of the emergent new collective spaces of LinkedIN and WhatsApp (representing semi formal and fully social layers of engagement and belonging) leave us. And as Generative AI is embedded into our social as well as technological context, we no longer have to make the effort to engage with it.

GenAI has shifted from a destination service to an embodied feature, and often it is embodied within us, as individuals, more so than in established Organisations.

Coming to Get You

And in the words of the Levellers, GenAI is certainly coming to get you. Ignorance, or hiding, is not enough to keep you safe, because AI alters context, and we cannot shelter from context.

If ignorance is not an option, and speed of understanding is a trap, where does that leave us?

A reasonable position to find ourselves in would be one of reckless curiosity, coupled with an evolving narrative.

As leaders, we may not know what we don’t know, but we can surely create space to be curious about it.

Curating time, sources of provocation, diverse community, and space for experimentation, are all important features.

A willingness to regularly consider if we still believe the things that we believe is also important, and hence to consider the triggers, and constraints, around this.

In a rapidly evolving context, if our certainty is both a bedrock and a trap, we need to be light of foot.

All of which is easy to say, but hard to do. We tend to be certainty rich and time poor.

Considerations

So consider:

1. Which sources of information are coming to me – and which am I seeking out. A balance between the two is important.
2. What are you most certain about – and who would challenge you on this (you may want to schedule a call with them to see if you can fracture your certainty)
3. Find a big empty box for all the things you do not know – and ask others to put things into it. Applications, ideas, uncertainty, insight.

We may imagine that Generative AI has landed, but we should remember that it has barely touched down – and that ‘it’ is a fluid thing – both specific technologies as well as related ideas.

Right now we are at a point of fracture: what emerges in these new spaces is a story not yet told.