Venture Capitalist Kai-Fu Lee Says CIOs Should Prepare for AI-Related Disruption
March 02 2021 - 4:53PM
Dow Jones News
By John McCormick
Chief information officers can take a number of steps to help
their companies prepare for the job disruption that artificial
intelligence will cause over the next several years, according to
venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee.
Dr. Lee, chairman and chief executive of venture-capital firm
Sinovation Ventures and author of "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon
Valley and the New World Order," maintains that AI "will wipe out a
huge portion of work as we've known it."
He hit on that theme again Tuesday when he spoke at The Wall
Street Journal's virtual CIO Network summit.
Artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee said, "can be used to improve
margins or save costs. And when it comes to using AI for saving
costs, then that usually means you're doing some tasks that
normally [a] human does. And that means the more successful you are
with your AI, you're potentially replacing jobs -- and displacing
jobs -- that may cause a reduction in force."
But keep in mind, he said, technological progress has always
meant job replacement. When computers first came along, the
machines replaced typists, telephone operators and other positions.
Information technology executives in the past prepared their
companies for this type of disruption, he said.
The CIO's role now is to advise their chief executives on the AI
transition ahead. CEOs, he said, "usually don't think in terms of
what technology might cause job displacement."
CIOs can help chief executives work out a road map for what jobs
will be replaced and when, said Dr. Lee, who oversaw the China
operations of Alphabet Inc.'s Google from 2005 to 2009.
Those plans should be made in a way that is sensitive to
employees, he said. That involves thinking about which jobs are
inevitably going away, how to tell the employees in a gentle way
that their positions are being eliminated and how to retrain them
for new careers, he said.
As AI is deployed, the CIO needs to be an adviser across the
organization. As artificial intelligence becomes available to
replace routine jobs in human resources, legal and accounting, CIOs
should be evaluating the software and helping business units select
packages that are best in class, he said.
He compares what is happening with AI today to the early days of
the internet. At that time, CIOs were evangelists, learning about
the technology and sharing what they learned with the rest of the
organization.
"The CIO was probably teaching the marketing department, the
customer service department, what the internet was and how they
should use it," he said.
Likewise, today's CIOs, he said, "should be willing and ready to
transition and teach...so that as AI becomes pervasive like [the]
internet, you've done your job in that transition process."
Write to John McCormick at john.mccormick@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 02, 2021 17:38 ET (22:38 GMT)
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