Back to the Future With AI
„What does your country need to do to make sure the next Microsoft or Apple of AI is founded there instead of in the United States or China?“
Artificial intelligence (AI) will not set you free, and it won't enslave you. It won't make you feel loved, but it may help find you someone who will. It will not save badly run companies, but may help save companies who want to become well-run. It won't save your country, but it may help you and other like-minded citizens save it.
At its simplest, AI is the ability of a machine to do tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. At its most developed, AI should be able to learn, reason, self-correct and understand emotional nuances. We are far from that point now, and it is debatable whether we will ever get there.
When you think about it, we have been developing crude models of AI since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. If you have ever flown, you have put your life in the hands of a form of AI, the aircraft auto-pilot, which was invented in 1912 and has been in regular use since World War II.
AI is one of the most talked-about topics in industry, politics and media. There is no question that AI is a seminal invention. It will be very big no matter how you slice it. The only remaining question is - will you, your company or your country play a significant role in developing and profiting from it?
In Croatia's case, how does a small country, with a history of embalming old technologies and the companies that rely on them, harness the potential of AI? The answer is as simple as it is hard.
As a country, we don't have be brilliant to succeed in AI, we just have to be willing to learn from the past, use reason and avoid past mistakes (self-correct) – much like AI, itself.
If someone returned you to the 1980s and asked „what does your country need to do to make sure the next Microsoft or Apple is founded and developed there instead of in the United States,“ how would you answer?
Knowing what you know now, you would say - start with a culture that embraces innovation, instead of one that fears it. Then cultivate relevant universities, populated with the best and brightest professors in the world which allows you to compete for and win the best students in the world, which elevates everyone's game.
You would say - make it easy to set up companies here so that those bright minds decide to stay here, creating wealth in Croatia rather than elsewhere. You would advocate adopting a legal framework that makes it easy to attract investment.
You would simplify administration so companies can focus on value-creating work like R&D, business development and customer support, instead of mastering the art of filling out paperwork. You would support business with a simple, transparent and low system of taxation, so companies focus their resources on building world-class products using the best paid talent.
As a finale, you would step back and leave all of these wonderful creative people alone to do their magic.
If Croatia had these ingredients in the 1980s, we would have profited from the proliferation of personal computers. If Croatia had these ingredients today, it would profit from the proliferation of AI.
It is not about luck, or hype, or messianic declarations, or billions of euros of government aid. It is about leadership with a long view which learns from past mistakes – much like AI, itself.
This is a translation of an original column that was published in Croatia's largest newspaper, Večernji List, on November 11, 2019, where I write about leadership, strategy and change management.
Image: Back to the Future 1955 Hill Valley, alanboar@Flickr
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