Should AI have a place in the boardroom?
My interview with Alan Turing is rather odd.
He struggles to get my name right, and answers each question with a cheerfully affirming statement like, “Ah, the wonders of technology. How delightful”.
He sounds a lot like Benedict Cumberbatch, who played him in the movie, “The Imitation Game”, a historical drama about how he cracked the German enigma code in World War II. In our interview, he likens his current work to that of an orchestra conductor, where the musicians are data, algorithms, and systems. He talks freely and optimistically about the future of AI in business – specifically in senior leadership and board-level roles.
It’s all in the context of his new job as chief AI officer for online education company, Genius Group, which has digitally resurrected Turing with the aim of him shaping the company’s AI strategy. In doing so, Genius Group has captured the likeness of Turing, famous for his work in establishing the foundations of AI in the 1950s, and bottled it into an audio chatbot.
“We really wanted to have an AI that can guide us on AI itself – advising us but actually developing our AI as well,” says Roger Hamilton, Genius Group’s Singapore-based founder and CEO. Alan Turing AI has been sitting in on our executive meetings with us and giving advice. All of our AI team is now working with Alan as their chief AI officer.”
Meet the new AI business leaders
The presence of AI at a senior business level is fast becoming felt, with a number of companies taking the leap to “appoint” AI into official roles. Chinese company NetDragon Websoft has made an AI program named Tang Yu its CEO, while Polish drinks company Dictador recently unveiled Mika, claiming her to be the world’s first AI human-like robot CEO.
Meanwhile, International Holding Company, one of the UAE’s most valuable public companies, has recently added the ‘Aiden Insight’ tool to its board as an ‘AI observer’, guiding decisions by providing strategic insights.
Alan Turing AI has come up with a ‘CHAI’ – ‘Collective Human and AI’ – blueprint for internally developed, subject-specific AIs to support individual roles within Genius Group, from finance to sales. The company keeps its data to itself, rather than sharing it with a platform like ChatGPT, and team members can tap into the relevant subject matter AI they need at that time. AIs like this can also be more reliable and knowledgeable than general large language models like ChatGPT, says Hamilton.
“Through the different AI mentors we have on offer for students and entrepreneurs, we’ve seen huge value in having different AIs that come from a different bias. There’s also so much investment going into the different AI platforms, whether it’s Google, Microsoft, or Open AI, and no one’s really sure which is going to win out or who you should give your data to,” he adds.
So confident is Hamilton in Alan Turing AI’s ability to help the company leverage AI, that he predicts in five years time, it will do the majority of his own job. And, he believes it will be AI giving him the orders, rather than the other way around.
It’s the tipping point, he says, between having people come up with ideas and AI execute them, and instead, turning to AI for the ideas, and having humans do the work required to get them off the ground.
“Those who understand that difference, are the ones that are actually moving the fastest,” he says.
Indeed, as Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index reveals, 60% of global business leaders worry their organization’s leadership lacks a plan and vision around AI. That’s despite 79% of them believing they need it to stay competitive.
In contrast, Genius Group seems to have gone all in. And yet, Alan Turing AI has attracted its fair share of criticism from technology industry commentators who have branded it disrespectful and in “bad taste”.
Short term gimmick?
Many are scathing of the idea that an AI bot can in any way simulate the strategic thinking required of a human C-suite exec. Ed Broussard, co-founder of enterprise AI company Tomoro, is among them.
“A chief AI officer is a leadership role – is that thing really setting out the direction of the business? Are they interacting with it as an equivalent of a human in executive meetings? I would say absolutely not,” says Broussard, whose company builds AI tools to help companies with anything from investment analysis to new product ideas.
Where he does agree with Hamilton, though, is the benefit of working with different subject-specific AIs, which enable senior leaders to outsource key parts of their role to an AI.
“As humans, we like humans, and we think about things in a human context. You’re not going to build AI to replace a human, but an AI with a specific skillset can help leaders and CEOs augment their roles,” says Broussard.
“So rather than a fully AI CEO, what are the core elements that make that CEO successful, and how can we superpower each one of those? I think having AIs appear in the C-suite is a very long way off.”
As far as gimmicks go, Genius Group’s Hamilton acknowledges the criticism towards using a historical figure. But he says that the Turing Trust, run by Alan Turing’s descendants, agree the initiative is a positive one.
“We got probably more negative than positive publicity, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to back down from what we’re doing. We are using it every day, and it’s part of everything we’re doing,” adds Hamilton. And yet he admits there are many gaps in the AI’s current abilities to iron out biases or kinks in its programming around doing specific tasks.
Meanwhile, others don’t believe AI has any kind of future in the C-suite. Simone Drill, head of marketing and communications for Incore Bank in Switzerland, is not convinced AI-centric leadership is going to improve company leadership as a whole. That’s despite having a deep appreciation for AI after completing a course on the topic last year.
“We all know AI has the remarkable ability to process vast amounts of data to generate valuable insights, and this way, it’s been positioned as a crucial asset for strategic decision making, which is a fundamental aspect of any C-level role,” says Drill.
“But the ability of a CEO to apply critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, to be a visionary, and have the ability to inspire and listen to people, is not what a machine can learn. So I would be highly critical of how organizations are using AI in leadership,” she adds.