The evening of Thursday 9 May saw the launch of CGIUKI’s AI Series. Attendees gathered at Saffron House to hear Professor Ashley Braganza, Dean of Brunel Business School, Chris Burt, co-founder and Chair of the Risk Coalition, and Clare Wardle, General Counsel and Company Secretary of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners discuss the topic of the moment – artificial intelligence.
What is AI?
When it comes to AI, there is a lot of jargon, and it’s not necessarily clear that everyone is using the terminology in the same way. In the absence of a formal definition of AI technology as a whole, it can be useful to characterise it as follows:
AI is adaptive – meaning that it is difficult to explain the logic or intent of the system’s outcomes. The outputs of AI, which are based on the system independently learning from training data, are not necessarily easily predictable by human developers.
AI is autonomous − meaning that systems make decisions without the express control of humans.
These two characteristics can mean that AI systems feel a bit like a black box, where information goes in and outputs come out, but we’re not quite sure what happens in the middle.
It is worth bearing in mind that AI is a broad term which is often used interchangeably with generative AI, however, the two terms do not mean the same thing. Generative AI is a subset of AI which creates new content – text, images, code − based on the data on which it has been trained.
What do boards and senior leadership need to know about AI?
It is well understood that AI comes with both risks and opportunities. While AI has managed to solve a decades-old protein-folding puzzle and is accelerating the discovery of new medicines, it has also seen the DPD chatbot swear at customers resulting in a media frenzy and significant reputational damage.
Understandably, boards and senior management are keen to harness this new tool without falling foul of potential pitfalls. Thursday’s expert panellists provided actionable advice to help organisations to get started on their AI journey.
For those who missed the opening session, there will be plenty more opportunities to build your knowledge of AI over the coming months as our AI Series continues. The next session, on 4 June, will be a webinar session looking at AI in strategy and leadership. Delegates will come away with the ability to:
Find out more about the whole AI Series and book your place.