This article, Behind the Curtain: A white-collar bloodbath, written by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen from Axios, shares a harsh warning about AI from the viewpoint of Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic and a leader in AI intelligence design.
What prompted me to share this article is a growing sense, based on what I’ve been reading, that leaders have a responsibility to be talking about AI with their teams, families, and friends. Doing our part to raise awareness and influence others to leverage AI as a strategic asset, both in business and in our personal lives, rather than becoming passive observers or victims of its impact.
Several years ago, I guided our technology strategy to do R&D more intensely on Insurtech software advances, robotics, and AI. We have done a lot of R&D and pilots in the Insurtech space with much of it being worth the learning yet not a lot of real applications that work to their promise or vision.
In robotics, we have started to apply some repeatable processes oriented at lower level tasks and testing and using some of the basic AI within the Microsoft tools environment, making promising progress. This article tells me we need to be more keenly aware of how to apply AI in our business and personally. I am committed as CEO to be more educated and proactive in the application of AI and robotics. I also want our team to be aware so personally they can use AI as an asset and as a reminder of our Smith Brothers TLC push from seven years ago. TLC stands for “Think, Lead, Collaborate”, and to do so get great at emotional intelligence and the power skills needed to advance and be of value in the AI world.
In our agency business, we have frictional costs in our business backroom (non-client touching) and, between our multiple carriers all with different platforms, we should be focused on a more efficient way to process our work with robots and AI to get the deliverables within our roles with clients. Several years ago, I shared with our leadership team that we can take out two-thirds of the labor costs to deliver what our clients’ need and I have publicly shared two times our productivity in the next five years. I now realize I likely underestimated the depth and speed at which AI will be applied in the next 18 – 24 months. There are several functions within the insurance industry that AI will be leveraged for and all of us need to be aware and act on it. A couple key opportunities are the talent succession needs in our industry and client expectations to deliver more efficiently for them. Robots and AI can and will be a huge competitive advantage.
Amodei believes the technology holds unimaginable possibilities to unleash mass good and bad at scale, sharing, “Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced, and 20% of people don’t have jobs.” Should this be the case, it is a different world to live in. While it still needs to be proven, I am asking myself, what if this is accurate? With this, I will continue to learn, keep the conversation real with stakeholders, and be a leader in this space.
Be Sure
Joe