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EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2023 speaker, Rahaf Harfoush discusses how, with AI’s rise, business leaders can imagine new ways of working.
In brief
Leaders tend to focus on the surface changes big disruptive technologies will bring to the business.
They often overlook the deeper cultural impacts that these technologies bring.
We need to start thinking about the human, cultural layer of impact to understand how best to deploy new AI technologies.
In June 2023, the world’s leading entrepreneurs gathered in Monaco for EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™, the ultimate global competition for entrepreneurs. Thought leaders from EY Tech University and the EY Luminary Network led interactive “Future of” sessions to discuss critical business challenges and today’s hot-button issues that will greatly impact our collective future.
Rahaf Harfoush, digital anthropologist and Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, spoke on the Future of Leadership and the new realities leaders face with the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Below are key takeaways from Rahaf’s session.
1. What new paradigms of innovation will meet the needs of future leaders?
“AI isn't the only thing that can be generative,” says Rahaf. “Human beings have an incredible power of imagination. There are so many new ideas that are being debated right now: the four-day work week, regenerative capitalism, equitable business practices.” Hear what she has to say about the exciting opportunity leaders have to challenge the status quo and create something new.
2. How can leaders use the power of AI for good?
“As human beings, we like heroes and villains. Everyone wants to know, is AI a good guy or a bad guy? The answer is: ‘It's going to be both.’ The rise of AI will be the best and worst thing that has happened for humanity.” Hear Rahaf expound on the benefits and challenges of AI.
3. How do business leaders find clarity in an unclear world?
“Many AI companies are not transparent about where they get the data or practices and safety measures they have in place. When we use these services in our own organizations, we risk bringing these biases inside the business as well. Without transparency on the data, everything becomes a closed box.” Watch as Rahaf challenges how business leaders will interpret and use data from large learning models (LLMs).
4. How do we define “creative mastery” in the age of AI?
“AI is changing video generation, market intelligence, knowledge management, scientific innovation, sound and music generation, and marketing and sales copy. The possibilities of the artificial creativity landscape are vast for how we as leaders source information, build expertise and generate content.” Watch as Rahaf discusses what this means for human creativity and how we evaluate mastery.
The views of third parties set out in this publication are not necessarily the views of the global EY organization or its member firms. Moreover, they should be seen in the context of the time they were made.
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