Guernsey’s Institute of Directors Next Gen Forum has been looking at AI, its positives for business, and the various hurdles that still exist for the budding technology.
‘Unlocking the Power of AI – Practical Insights for Tomorrow’s Leaders’, was held at Kings’ 1857 club, and was sponsored by Sure Business.
More than 70 business leaders attended to hear expert speakers discuss the process of AI adoption in business, how it can be used to increase productivity, and how to overcome barriers to its adoption.
Malcolm Mason, a Channel Island expert on AI usage, gave practical advice, such as to establish an internal policy, gather knowledgeable staff, and allow employees to find daily tasks that AI can help with.
He claimed this process will help free up employee time to focus on business and customers.
He also stated that a key misunderstanding about AI is viewing it only as a technology issue, arguing it must be adopted by the business starting from the leadership also.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Mark Wilkinson gave his assessment on the promise of AI.
Mr Wilkinson said the introduction of AI, in its currently available form, will have a greater effect on business than the widespread availability of the internet two decades ago.
He argued for four recommended steps in order to start utilising AI, such as define your vision, remove adoption hurdles, identify the associated risks, and then implement the version of AI that suits the business best.
He provided an example from the insurance sector where AI was used to analyse incoming emails to determine customer insurance requests and create responses based on existing data.
This was supported by ‘guardrails’ to maintain compliance when requests were outside of standard situations. This allowed employees to focus their time on more difficult and complex work.
Cyrille Joffre, also from Sure Business, detailed how the telecoms company uses AI in it’s customer support.
Mr Joffre said AI evaluates customer-raised issues based on urgency and sentiment, then quickly sends them to the appropriate team.
It also analyses the data afterward to identify frequent issues, allowing the company to provide relevant answers, which was previously a manual process, resulting in time savings and freeing staff to help more people directly.
The event ended with Co-Vice Chair Max Hamon noting that there is a clear interest among the Guernsey business community in using AI responsibly to improve their operations.
He emphasised the shared duty of business leaders to consider how the community will use AI to influence the future of the island’s economy and business.