AI for Orchestrators - Newsletter #20

The latest AI insights for Business Leaders and Organisational Orchestrators.

Staccato provocation…

Talent…is rapidly evolving…

Hello Business Orchestrators!

In this weeks newsletter:

An intriguing last week kicked off with a workshop between UK and Nordic HR leaders focused on Alignment. But not the AI-Alignment challenges we’ve all been hearing so much about recently.

This workshop was focused on human-to-human alignment; specifically, as generative AI floods our teams via multiple overlapping use cases, how do the Senior Leadership team, Board and Investors remain aligned on the possibilities, risks, and evolving assumptions that need to be managed? How to ensure short and medium term (relative) demands of the various stakeholders from the CEO, Sales, R&D, Operations, HR, CFO, Production, Distribution and others, remain in synch, and capitalise on productivity and new capacity released from teams increasingly levelling-up across workflows?

Perhaps your Board needs to be fully briefed of the seismic shifts under way that could impact next year’s plans, or M&A. If you’re owned by Private Equity, how do you get them onside about the evolving AI-augmented talent mix needed to drive the returns they expect? And ensure you retain those staff and their rapidly evolving capabilities.

The blurring pace of feedback loops and flywheels.

During the workshop I posed the challenge of how an incumbent business, providing global event management services, would reshape its talent pool when impacted across workflows by AI Agents, as in this scenario that I wrote about in this article for The Copenhagen Post last year.

Across the organisational spectrum, HR is playing a critical role, and in parallel having to redefine, and re-skill itself.

Easier said than done as goal posts get moved…and added. But you would be surprised what you can open up during a half-day sprint, using ChatGPT and other tools, with a highly motivated international team.

Lets dive into some of the weeks headlines that could be on your radars, dear Orchestrators, as you give me 5 minutes of your valuable time!

This weeks attention grabbers:

• Zeta Labs, based in London, have announced new agent technology to “liberate humans from unnecessary work”. More on it in this piece in VentureBeat.

• Over in Denmark, the Viking media are massing and on the march to secure collective terms with GenAI shops, amid fears that smaller countries and their associated media groups are becoming marginalised as the LLMs continue to consume content (Wired).

• Governments around the world are apparently accelerating investments in sovereign compute to train up LLMs with local languages and national data. This is fuelling the balance sheets of big tech such as NVIDIA. (Investing.com).

• Argentina being pitched as a low-regulation AI-hub (FT paywall).

• …meanwhile, OpenAI is boosting it’s lobbying team…(FT paywall).

• OpenAI’s annualised revenue doubles to $3.4BN since late ‘23 according to The Information.

• GenAI at home, at work and at the hospital. New research on risks and rewards (Techxplore).

• Patent Lawyers warning that although AI can improve their productivity, it could also lead to the invalidation of patents, because it is more efficient at discovering documents that the legal eagles couldn’t previously spot. Intriguing (FT free).

• Photonics chip integrates sensing and compute for ultra-fast (nanoseconds) machine vision. Think robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, all edge devices (Techxplore).

• Large-scale simulation platform for training robots on “everyday tasks” (Techxplore).

• Solar system size in perspective (YouTube).

5 questions for Organisational Orchestrators:

1. How are we ensuring that our Leadership, Board, and Investors remain in sync regarding the possibilities, risks, and assumptions of generative AI-human augmentation?

2. What measures are in place to align short and medium-term demands of key stakeholders like the CEO, Sales, R&D, Operations, and HR to harness productivity gains from GenAI?

3. How are we keeping our Board informed about the significant changes GenAI could bring to next year’s plans or potential mergers and acquisitions?

4. If owned by Private Equity, what strategies are we using to align their expectations with the evolving GenAI-augmented talent mix required for desired returns?

5. How is HR redefining its role and re-skilling to support the organisation's GenAI-driven transformation effectively?

Staccato Burst…

Look for adjacencies. Consider how each new release of an LLM eats into the moat of incumbent businesses when combined with entrepreneurial minds…and agents…

That’s all for this week. If you’re curious you can also check out more insights from Gaoithe.biz, on the organisational implications from applying (or not applying) GenAI.