David De Cremer, the Dunton Family Dean at Northeastern's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, delves into how AI can enhance, not replace, human roles in leadership. He discusses the unique challenges leaders face with AI's rapid evolution and emphasizes the importance of understanding its fundamentals to communicate effectively with tech teams. De Cremer advocates for viewing AI as a creative partner rather than just a cost-saving tool, urging leaders to foster a culture of trust and innovation as they navigate this technological shift.
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insights INSIGHT
AI Adoption Challenges
AI is substantially different from prior digital transformations.
AI adoption efforts are failing at alarming rates.
insights INSIGHT
AI's Impact on Humanity
AI is different because we're outsourcing our cognition, not just physical capabilities.
This shift causes anxiety about humanity's role in a world increasingly reliant on AI.
insights INSIGHT
Leadership's Role in AI Adoption
AI adoption projects often fail to create value because leaders treat it as a purely technical exercise.
Leaders defer to tech experts without asking crucial business questions, leading to misaligned implementations.
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This book helps leaders take control of the rapid deployment of AI across organizations. It focuses on nine actions leaders need to take to successfully transition to a more AI-centric future, leading to growth for both companies and workers. The book emphasizes skills such as creating a vision, communicating well, and executing a strategy in the context of AI, rather than mastering machine learning or the latest AI technologies. It serves as a clarion call for leaders to take their rightful place at the front of the AI revolution and lead their organizations into the new world of human-machine collaboration.
David De Cremer: The AI-Savvy Leader
David De Cremer is the Dunton Family Dean of the D'Amore-McKim School of Business and professor of management and technology at Northeastern University. He's also an affiliated faculty member at the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University and an affiliated researcher at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT. His newest book is titled The AI-Savvy Leader: Nine Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work*.
We’ve all heard the warnings that AI is going to take our jobs. That’s certainly a possibility in the long term, but the story emerging, at least for now, is looking a little different. In this episode, David and I discuss how leaders can use AI to augment, not replace, human intelligence.
Key Points
AI is substantially different than prior digital transformations, and adoption efforts are failing at alarming rates.
Instead of leading, too often leaders are being too deferential to data and analytics teams.
Your expertise is exactly what your organization needs to deploy AI successfully.
Leaders who learn the fundamentals of AI will play an essential role in narrating dialogue between the technology experts and everyone else.
Get just enough foundational knowledge with statistics and modeling to communicate with the data and analytics folks better.
Resources Mentioned
The AI-Savvy Leader: Nine Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work* by David De Cremer
Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes
How to Solve the Toughest Problems, with Wendy Smith (episode 612)
How to Begin Leading Through Continuous Change, with David Rogers (episode 649)
Principles for Using AI at Work, with Ethan Mollick (episode 674)
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