Before ChatGPT and Midjourney hit the scene, AI had been subtly transforming our daily lives for many decades. Spam filters, spellcheck, search engine results – all AI. As this tech becomes even more ingrained in our lives, how can we best use it to harness human potential at work?

Blessing Utete, Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants, delved into this topic in episode 3 of the latest season of our podcast, Big Business Insights. He was joined by guests Antonia Bothner, Capital Markets Lead at Endeavor SA, and Samad Masood, Associate Vice President at Infosys Knowledge Institute, for a thought-provoking discussion. Here are five lessons that emerged from the chat to help us use AI to build a better future for businesses and us all.

1. AI only works as well as the people using it

Aside from all the sensationalistic headlines, it’s helpful to consider how much AI has actually been integrated into workflows so far. “I think it’s worth understanding that with any technology, the hit rate is not always as high as people assume,” explained Masood. “Even if the technology itself works, what’s really important is how it’s embedded in the organisation. For many decades, there’s been evidence that technology implementations in large businesses don’t return the value that was expected because the processes don’t change around them. People aren’t helped to change their roles. You do the same thing; it takes the same amount of time. You just have a nice, shiny, expensive box to help you with it.”

Any tech is a tool and it’s limited by the human using the tech, agreed Bothner. “AI is in this quite awkward stage of being like a tween with all this potential, but actually a slight overconfidence in what it was producing. I think we’re at the early stages of looking at the transformation,” she said.

2. Humanity and trust remain at the core of doing business

It’s no mean feat to integrate AI into human-centric businesses, particularly when it comes to maintaining empathy and meaningful customer interactions, and dealing with the psychology and the emotions that go with money, for example. “Certainly all businesses require humans and are human-centric in one way,” said Masood. “But whether your business model depends on human centricity is another [story]. If the customer is expecting a human response – to be served at a restaurant by a human, to speak to a human psychologist – that’s part of the value. Because it’s based on real relationships.”

“There is a creepiness factor that people feel when they’re dealing with AI,” Masood continued. “A lot of us are quite scared about it and I think those elements have to be taken into account to understand how you can build trust. How can you use AI to enhance human capability and in fact become perhaps more human-centric through the use of AI?”

“The key elements are building trust by augmenting humans, and enabling the humans in your organisation and your customers, your partners, to have more human relationships. That’s really what people want.”

3. Creativity comes from obstacles, limits and mistakes

Necessity is the mother of all invention. As a race, we have evolved only because we have adapted to our challenges. “I still believe that innovation is a hugely human quality,” said Bothner. “It often comes about during some kind of hardship or suffering.” It is this human potential to imagine, make mistakes and act irrationally (out of the box) that AI simply can’t do.

We are in a period of intense change. It’s complex, it’s confusing, and it’s fast. The rules and applications of AI are not well defined. But it won’t always be this way, suggested Bothner. “Initially, when we have a new technology, it can feel quite destabilising. We want to resist it. But it does break down to a norm after a while.”

Artificial intelligence has been deployed in businesses, governments, and systems for many decades and has been slowly getting better. It’s now giving lay people the opportunity to test and play, and see what can happen.

Nobody could have predicted how social media has transformed our world – not even AI. “It’s a technology that’s completely revolutionised the way we work as a society, creating a new value chain of creative people who make memes, troll accounts and comedy videos,” said Masood. “This tech has actually boosted creativity. We’re in an incredibly communicative and creative era of our lives.”

4. We still need humans to make sense of data

Particularly in finance, we can tend to be too emotional when we make decisions, which is why having advisers is great, because you can really just cut through the data, suggested Bothner. But people still need to have a narrative to understand the data. “If you spend any time with data, you realise that the answer is very rarely obvious. The more you look at data, the more grey areas there are, and the more of your discernment you need to use to decide what to do. If AI is to do this for us, we need to trust what it tells us. That’s where that human element has to come in,” said Masood.

Bothner agreed: “Mark Twain famously said there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. You can look at data and you can build a story around it. It really depends on the lens.”

5. We need (human) critical thinking skills more than ever

What kind of skills do future generations need to cultivate to stay relevant? “People need to develop a critical thinking approach to technological outputs that they’re given,” said Masood. “That’s how we can help technology be better, because it isn’t magic. We need to be there to guide it. We’ll still go back to the fundamentals of how you make decisions as a human.”

So, we can instead focus on developing those skills of using the tech to enhance rather than replace people. Continuous learning, having a growth mindset, and staying open to these new technologies are musts.

Listen to the podcast episode for the full conversation. It’s encouraging to see that while AI has a significant role to play in improving efficiency and organising information, it’s our creativity, connections with others, and ability to think outside the box that will keep businesses thriving.

Or, tune in on your favourite podcast platform like Spotify or Apple Podcasts to listen to this episode and subscribe to hear others in the series, or listen in on YouTube.