Enter a boardroom these days and pay close attention. There is not excitement about the coffee. It relates to artificial intelligence and how it interacts with corporate life. The name you will find increasingly sneaking into discussions is Alex Pollock. He does not merely toss jargon or talk about artificial intelligence. He delves immediately into the ways in which businesses, large and small, must approach thinking very differently.
Alex’s approach is not one of merely plugging in the most recent artificial intelligence technology and hoping for miracles. He has examined behind the hood at what drives artificial intelligence and understands that the scoreboard shows more than just immediate wins. He probes keenly: The company’s aim is what? Does the quality data meet sufficient standards? Is this scale a paperweight a year from now or anything else? Not just tech-flavored frosting, Alex wants policymakers to align artificial intelligence adoption with actual concerns.
His method is naturally based on experimentation. Alex puts this practically in terms: Let little pilots fly. Measure, observe, and grow in knowledge. Scrape what doesn’t work. He really likes “fail fast, learn faster.” In one of his webinars, he related the tale of a logistics company creating a forecasting model driven by artificial intelligence. The first release failed. He reworked it by investigating what data was being overlooked; it turns out that prediction accuracy was much improved by traffic camera feeds.
He values culture a great deal. AI starts change, but change can jangle nerves. Alex counsels leadership teams on openness about what artificial intelligence does and does not do. Many people mistakenly believe that artificial intelligence translates into pink notes. “No, artificial intelligence is not out to pilfers your lunch,” he said recently. Rather, he sees artificial intelligence as a means of augmenting staff effectiveness and slicing through agonizing manual labor.