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1、 2021 Boston Consulting Group1Reimagining the Future of Business and Techwith Kai-Fu LeeNOVEMBER 18, 2021 By Martin ReevesAI expert and author Kai-Fu Lee shares his views on the intersection ofhuman cognition and artificial intelligence with BHIs imagination expertMartin Reeves. 2021 Boston Consulti
2、ng Group2AI will play an increasingly important role in business and society. At the same time,human capabilities like imagination and empathy will also become more importanttouncover new paths to growth and to connect and build trust with others. AI expert Kai-Fu Lee, coauthor of AI 2041, a book th
3、at blends imaginative storytelling and technicalcommentary to examine how artificial intelligence will reshape the world of businesswithin 20 years, recently joined Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG HendersonInstitute and coauthor of The Imagination Machine, at ConsiliumBCG for aconversation about
4、the future of business and tech. The following is a lightly editedexcerpt from their longer discussion.Thank you Kai-Fu for joining me today to share your perspectives on theintersection of human cognition and artificial intelligence. Your book AI2041 is about the wide-ranging implications of techno
5、logy. How willartificial intelligence technologies shape the future of business?Kai-Fu: AI will be a ubiquitous and omni-use technology that brings dramaticchanges to industries such as transportation, manufacturing, health care, retailalmost every imaginable industry. The technology behind AI is a
6、set of algorithmsthat takes data and makes decisions, predictions, and classifications in ways thatpreviously required human intelligence. If companies dont embrace AI, they willquite simply be left behind.You make the case in AI 2041 that theres an inevitability to the ubiquity ofsuch technologies.
7、 You point out that we are dealing here not with newtechnologies but with ones that are already fully functional. Yet weveheard this before about technologies such as blockchainwhose prospectsnow seem to have been exaggerated. On what do you base your belief?Kai-Fu: The most likely impact in the nea
8、r term will be from extrapolations ofrobotic process automation (RPA) and natural language processing (NLP)technologies. Effectively, that means taking the workflow in your company andinstalling software to execute many elements more effectively. 2021 Boston Consulting Group3For example, if you have
9、 an HR department, AI could start by using NLP to helpyou sort candidates, propose the right candidates, or provide better matches forreview. If that works well, it could directly send emails to these candidates andarrange interviews that can be scheduled without human intervention. Goingfurther, it
10、 could potentially conduct salary negotiations, make offers, or triageamong interviewers and their comments and try to find the right kind of offer foreach candidate.And when that starts to show promise, you are likely to replace some of the peoplemaybe even most of the peoplein your recruiting depa
11、rtment. You might thenstart thinking about how to use AI for new employee orientations or for trackingemployee performance. You might consider how it can help employee training orself-enrichment, and very soon you would see the value of AI within HRyouregetting more value at lower cost.Then you migh
12、t say “perhaps I should use this in the finance department.” And youwill immediately see how tasks like expense reports and audit alertsmany of thethings that entry-level accountants are often asked to docan be automated. Then,youre going to move to the legal department, the marketing department, an
13、dcustomer serviceyoull see that AI can answer most of the phone calls or reply tomost of the emails. It will lead not only to equivalent or greater customersatisfaction and a comparable resolution rate but also to intelligent attempts toupsell your products at the end of each customer service case.T
14、his will go on and on. I think companies that start to use AI will reap the rewardsand experience this type of snowball effect that builds their companys overallknowledge, connects their data together, better serves their customers, and savesthem money. Of course, this will ultimately lead to the di
15、splacement of a certainpercentage of routine workers jobs.Questions arise from your example of the HR department and the snowballeffect. How much of what we call management today consists of routinework that will inevitably be substituted with AI? 2021 Boston Consulting Group4Kai-Fu: I think some of
16、 it is management, but a lot of it is workers who arebasically doing routine tasks. I dont think every job will be fully automated, but Ithink that a percentage of each job will be automated. So when you look at acorporation in aggregate, this adds up to substantial numbers.There are also cases wher
17、e it goes beyond just replacing the routine and helps yougain a competitive edge. If we go back to the recruiting example, there arecompanies that will do recruiting with an AI avatar that interviews their candidatesnot to make the final decision but to do the initial screen. I think that isincredib
18、ly valuable, because the initial screen often determines the overall qualityof the entry-level or campus hires that you are reviewing. With humans, you canonly afford to screen so many candidates, but with AI theres almost no marginalcost to additional screening. You can screen ten times more candid
19、ates and beassured of a larger pool that will be interviewed further by humans, so the processdoesnt changeyou just get a better pipeline coming in.Another example is in the financial sector. If you give out loans, you can improveyour margins by having AI determine who is likely to default and who i
20、s likely topay you back. If youre in insurance, AI can help you determine how to construct abetter product.And the list goes on and on. Its not just about job displacement; it also helps youimprove your competitiveness in many key aspects of your business.A lot of the algorithms for AI are open-sour
21、ce, so one could take the viewthat, if this is something that all of us can use, AI will merely raise theminimum standard for efficiency in business, not necessarily buildadvantage. Is there is a sustainable, competitive advantage in theseapplications? And if so, where does the advantage come from?K
22、ai-Fu: Thats a great question. Ill give my answer in two parts.First, I think there is arguably not that much competitive advantage in thetechnologies themselves. However, most traditional businesses are not really 2021 Boston Consulting Group5thinking deeply about what AI can do for the business, p
23、artly because it sounds likescience fiction to them and partly because people dont know where to start. Andthis will continue for a while. Think about the time when people were about toembrace the internet; they didnt know whether to embrace it or how it fit intotheir company. But now, almost every
24、company relies on the internet; if you didntyou wouldnt be around today.The point is that, although AI is open-source, adoption in traditional businesses isstill in the single digits. So if you try to find the right place to start incorporating AI,I think you will have a competitive advantage, not b
25、ecause the technology is sohard to build but because your competitors are probably not thinking about it yet.Second, to do this right its important to either hire someone really good or appointsomeone to serve as the acting chief AI officer. Perhaps you want to have someonelike BCG as your partner t
26、o build this, or perhaps you want to find a privatecompany to partner with you. But its incredibly important that you find the rightfirst applications for AI, because weve seen about as many failures as successes inits implementation. The failures usually result from the CEO having a view of AIthat
27、is naive or too optimistic: perhaps they didnt realize the cost and the resourcerequirements to get the data together, or they picked the wrong area to apply AI. Soif you havent already, I think its really important that you find the right partner orhire someone good to get started. If you dont, the
28、res a good chance youll bedisappointednot because AI doesnt work. Perhaps you applied it to the wrongarea, or maybe you need to reset your expectations.Lets talk about another dimension of competitive advantage ordisadvantage, which is digitally native versus non-digitally nativecompanies. Is it rea
29、lly a level playing field between the two?Kai-Fu: Lets say, for the moment, that we drop the perfect management team intoa traditional business to disrupt it with AI. Hypothetically, in 99 cases out of 100,the traditional company will win because it has already established the workflow, 2021 Boston
30、Consulting Group6the process, the supply chain, the customer relationships, andmost importantlythe data.For AI to work, data is critical. Having the data gives you a huge advantage. Youvealready got the customers using your products; its a matter of capturing their dataand securing your advantage by
31、 using AI the right way. That means traditional,established companies should be the de facto winners.However, in reality, traditional companies are often run by people who may notunderstand AI, may not get the right help, and may be too optimistic or toopessimistic. That actually opens up opportunit
32、ies for digitally native startups tocompete.If they take what I say seriously, traditional companies will realize that its theirgame to lose. They must become digitally capable, get the data, and use it to buildbusiness intelligence and artificial intelligence. The key to entry for AI startups isjus
33、t hiring a bunch of smart, AI PhDsbut traditional companies can do that too.Thats a really good answer. Weve talked about the substitution factorwhat AI can do better than humans. But theres the flip side to thatquestion: what can humans do better than AI? In my view, the differentialvalue of human
34、cognition increases in areas like imagination, ethics, orpurpose. From your perspective, how can we migrate human cognition tomore uniquely human tasks in the corporation of 2041?Kai-Fu: If we think 20 years out, most of the routine tasks currently executed byhumans will have been replaced by AI, so
35、 people will need to migrate to things AIcannot do or to new opportunities that AI will create.I think what AI cannot do falls in the areas that you talked aboutcreativity,thinking across dimensions, thinking outside of the box. Thats one category thatwe can call creativity or imagination. 2021 Bost
36、on Consulting Group7The other category is human-to-human touch. Thats something AI can emulatebut cannot do well. People really dont want to trust AI to be their psychiatrists, forexample, or their health care professionals. I think there will be a huge number ofjob opportunities where human-to-huma
37、n interaction is required or where the jobis to build human-to-human trust. For at least 20 years, if not longer, that will stillbe a role for humans to hold.Of course, many professional jobs will benefit from AI tools, so there will be anupgrading and redefinition of the job of a lawyer, accountant
38、, doctor, or scientist.Humans will find their new roles by working symbioticallydoing what AI cannotdo, while leveraging AI as a tool.I also think AI will create many jobs. Although I cant enumerate all of them, therewill certainly be robot repair people, autonomous vehicle repair people, roboticssc
39、ientists, AI researchers, and data scientists or individuals who collect data. AI isall about data, so thats one category of roles I can predict, but many more willcertainly emerge that are hard to predict today.So humans will need to figure out how to work with AIto build whatweve called the “bioni
40、c organization.” We must think about questions likewhat will humans do, what will the machines do, what will the machineshelp the humans do, what will the humans help the machines do, how willthe interfaces between the two work, and so on. Whats your vision of whatyour children will mean by the word
41、 “organization” in 2041?Kai-Fu: Wow, thats a very tough one to predict. In my book, I dont go intocorporate leadership and management, but what I know for sure is that morecorporations will be managing the businesses with data, and with predictions and“what ifs.”Today, a lot of that work is being do
42、ne by people. I imagine that at the top of thecorporation there will still be the same people who will have proven themselves tobe true leaders. The CEOs who have demonstrated their leadership, compassion, 2021 Boston Consulting Group8strategy abilities, communication skills, and so on will still be
43、 leaders oforganizations in 2041.What will be different is that some of the jobs that you now delegate to your directreports will be done by AI. For example, if you want to know what your strategyshould be and what stocks you should buy if the trade war between the US andChina escalates, AI will do
44、that for you. Do you have exposures and vulnerabilitiesin your portfolio if the Panama Canal is clogged for another week? Should yourethink your logistics or talent strategy if elections are won by such-and-such peoplenext year? These are questions that you ask your staff today, but by 2041 many oft
45、hem will be addressable with AI. AI wont be just pretty pictures or three-dimensional graphs that your staff prepares for you; it will go one step further anddo the analysis, assess the pros and cons, and show you the most cogent answerwhich in general will be more comprehensive and valuable in help
46、ing you make theright decisions.You can hear Kai-Fu Lee and Martin Reeves discussing AI 2041 in greater depth in theBHI Thinkers and Ideas podcast.The BCG Henderson Institute is Boston Consulting Groups strategy think tank,dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business,tec
47、hnology, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. TheInstitute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expandthe boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideasfrom within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration from
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51、el across the firm andthroughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clientsthrive and enabling them to make the world a better place. Boston Consulting Group 2021. All rights reserved. For information or permission to reprint, please contact BCG at .To find the
52、latest BCG content and register to receive e-alerts on this topic or others,please visit . Follow Boston Consulting Group on Facebook and Twitter.InterviewerMartin ReevesManaging Director & Senior Partner, Chairman of the BCG Henderson InstituteSan Francisco - Bay Area 2021 Boston Consulting Group10 2021 Boston Consulting Group11