19JULY - SEPTEMBER - 202019July - September 2019That's OK. A healthy innovation lifecycle management and a comprehensive opportunity assessment across the organisation will likely only ever achieve this.The thing to realise about hitting it big is that the highly disruptive innovation to your business or your industry is going to come from not just doing what you do today with added AI in the mix, but by repackaging aspects of what you do today, likely with those things done by other people, in order to offer a compelling solution that wins big in the market.Let's look at Uber by way of example. They are the world leader in traffic routing: their AI technologies have the most data and the availability of compute on their customers' handsets given them the most scaled compute resource on the market. Their rise to success was nothing to do though with either of these factors, it was down to their ability to package existing technology features: GPS enabled smartphones, and mobile payment technology; together with offline capacity: a network of drivers with time on their hands. This repackaging was the secret to their success.The lesson here for those of us with incumbent organisations looking for a potential transformative opportunity from AI is to create the conditions to enable rapid repacking of systems and processes to take advantage of where AI can slot in and make the difference. You don't see blockbuster conferences like the equivalent of CogX for Microservices or APIs, but the truth is ­ these technologies are the much `bigger-bets' than is AI. Without awesome technology to ensure the seamless connection between end customers, third parties and your existing processes and systems ­ you can build as many `killer' apps as you like, but they just won't work. Microservices are the cure to Arnie's arthritis.Your techies don't have the answer to AI ethics.So, you've nailed the innovation capability and conducted a wholesale opportunity assessment across your firm. You've got a portfolio of initiatives that are delivering incremental value to the organisation, and you've even been successful at repackaging third-party capability with your own to deliver the big disruptive stuff. Well done, hero. You've done well.If, like Mr. Zuckerberg, you've made it big without a thought on ethics ­ then shame on you, you've played the system ­ but good luck sleeping at night.I feel that it's only a matter of time before there is the `extinction rebellion' equivalent to the technology industry. Too many companies are looking at emerging technology as being the silver bullet, and they'll worry about the fluffy stuff later.We all have a responsibility to each other and society. If we fail on this, we fail to be human.Ethics is different from compliance. It's not because Facebook played fast and loose with regulators that they face potentially irrevocable reputational damage, it's because they failed to have a conversation with their stakeholders about what they were trying to do. Ethics is also not the same thing as safety. I'm tired of all the conversations right now about AI ethics, which only seem to revolve around explainability (XAI) or overcoming bias. These are technical considerations, the difference here is like the difference between engineering tolerances in firing chamber design, and whether to give kids bulletproof backpacks for school in a conversation about the ethics of firearms.Also, ethics shouldn't be a thing that's decided by a group of `experts' meeting behind closed doors. To do so is to not understand the problem. Many major tech firms have such `ethics boards,' but how many of them have their decisions, reasoning, or even their composition open to public scrutiny? The problem is similar to the tobacco industry in the 1950s, we know that emerging tech has a long term impact on the health of society, but how many of us are willing to acknowledge this ­ and even slow down its deployment ahead of the pursuit of profit or capital creation?The opportunity is there for people and organisations to get Digital Ethics right, to build this into a pillar of capability right from the outset. My belief is in the long-run, this strategy will pay off. Only time will tell. Charles RadclyffeRobotic Process Automation technologies are a great example of platforms that have reached the level of maturity that they can be successfully implemented by adopting traditional project management approaches
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