Once in a while, we are fortunate enough to be at the right place and time when there would be super smart people to explain the important but abstract ideas – they have figured everything out and just laid it all out for the rest of us.

One such smart person is Mike Walsh, best-selling author of three books and CEO of Tomorrow. The place was Kuching, Sarawak during the World Congress of IT, and the idea was about AI and the role it has in our lives at home and at work.

If you are in IT or marketing, you’ve probably had a long lineup of AI best practices drummed into your head ever since ChatGPT appeared. Who hasn’t heard yet that we have to fundamentally redesign our work processes, rather than bolt on AI technologies , or have our talent reskilled with not- figured out new skills

There isn’t anything new that Mr. Walsh had to say. But there were still very intriguing ideas that may be too soon to tell if they are unfolding or not. We could end up talking about it for a very long time until the day it hits us that it is happening.

For example, in the future, the valuation gap between technology companies and “traditional”  companies will be replaced by companies that are AI-leveraged or not AI-leveraged.

I guess this photo of Mike Walsh’s slide says it all.

Then there is what potentially lies beyond remote work. During labor shortages last year, convenience store workers in Japan robot arms took over the job of restocking shelves. Not forgetting, we already seem comfortable enough to have our digital avatars trade tokens in virtual universes, or have an AI-trained version of ourselves talk to potential dates on mobile apps. So, why can’t we further abstract ourselves from the workplace by sending our AI likenesses into the office?

“Perhaps this is what digital transformation can look like: The use of technology to help an organization progress beyond experimentation with tools and towards building platforms and processes that fundamentally change and expand the scope of the work they do.”

Thanks to technology and AI, organizations that have successfully leveraged them are making serious headway. Let’s go through a few examples of the hints we are getting about the future.

AI Benefits: Scale, Speed, Scope

Think Adobe, and then think MidJourney. Adobe is a creative software company founded 40 years ago that is hugely successful, while the latter is a service that is able to generate extremely creative images using natural language descriptions.

Released about 15 months ago with only eleven employees onboard, what MidJourney has achieved seems phenomenal compared to Adobe with its 44,000 plus employees. Open AI and Whatsapp also get special mentions for their achievements – one unleashed the second big AI renaissance with over 350 staff, while Whatsapp had 55 employees when they were sold to Facebook for USD20 million. This prompts the leaders of companies challenged by Open AI, MidJourney, and Whatsapp, to ask themselves whether they have the right people doing the right things at the right time.

Mike Walsh also wanted to highlight Shein, and India, as two other examples that leveraged AI and automation for speed and economies of scope.

Shein had the ability to identify fashion trends on social media, and then design, manufacture and ship new products to market in as little as 6 to 8 days. 

It’s not enough just to do existing work better or faster. Companies have the opportunity to look for ways to expand the scope of their work. India used AI to help them take an agile approach to sending and landing a spacecraft on the moon at low cost. 

Perhaps this is what digital transformation can look like: The use of technology to help an organization progress beyond experimentation with tools and towards building platforms and processes that fundamentally change and expand the scope of the work they do.

And Then There is Sustainability

“For every five questions you enter into ChatGPT, it requires one bottle of water to cool the data center,” Mike Walsh also said, bringing up the possibility that tech companies today may be considered cigarette companies in the future if they are not progressive on their path to being Net Zero.

That being said, there is actually very real opportunity for organizations to utilize AI to be more sustainable, for example:

• learning how to optimize energy usage,
• monitoring emissions,
• making industrial processes and logistics routes more energy efficient,
• designing more sustainable products and services that produce less waste,
• and even reskilling workers with AI skills to help develop and apply new sustainable technologies.

New technologies can expand our capabilities. Right now, organizations can focus on how AI can help them do things faster, cheaper, better, and even in a way that is kinder to our environment.