Hesitating on AI Could Cost You Everything — Here's Why Bold Leaders Are Acting Now
SOURCE:Entrepreneur|BY:Ben Lytle
Bold, strategic AI adoption enables leaders to drive productivity and amplify human potential in the face of rapid demographic, workforce and innovation shifts.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Key Takeaways
Leaders must focus on using AI to boost productivity and address workforce decline due to aging populations, rather than succumbing to fear-driven narratives about its dangers.
AI cannot replace our uniquely human traits; the key is to integrate AI in ways that enhance our humanity and quality of life.
Companies should adopt AI-centric strategies like creating digital CEO alter egos, preserving institutional knowledge and incentivizing AI innovation among employees.
Much of the AI discourse among business leaders revolves around fear. There are valid concerns with how we use AI and its effects, such as mass layoffs or eroding our humanity. However, we have no choice about whether we use AI.
The true challenge for leaders isn’t whether AI is safe to use, but how to use it wisely and urgently to sustain growth, productivity and human well-being in a rapidly changing world. From aging populations and talent shortages to the need for smarter education and innovation, AI offers the most powerful tool we have to boost productivity, preserve institutional knowledge and enhance human potential.
Instead of focusing on questions rooted in fear, let’s explore strategic and priority-focused questions that leaders should consider regarding the merits of AI.
How can economies and companies grow as the population declines?
Declining and aging populations are a greater risk to prosperity and well-being than AI job losses or abuse. However, elected officials, education and most business leaders have largely ignored the consequences of declining birth rates and population aging for 50 years.
Population stability is the foundation of economic vitality. Across the developed world, birth rates have fallen below the level needed to sustain current populations, meaning workforces are shrinking and consumer bases are contracting. For any economy, long-term growth depends on a steady supply of productive workers and robust consumer spending. This means that sustaining population health isn’t just a demographic issue, but a business, quality of life and economic imperative.
National and global economies risk stagnation, increasing unemployment and deteriorating living standards comparable to the 20th Century’s Great Depression, when Japan provides a current example of the stagnating economic effects of a declining and aging population. U.S. healthcare is another example with acute staffing shortages of doctors, nurses, other clinicians and caregivers, and a shortage of trained professionals to replace them. Make no mistake — other industries will follow.
Thankfully, the solution is straightforward: Leverage AI to boost productivity faster than population decline, while accelerating replacement education and training.
How can we implement AI to enhance our humanity and quality of life instead of degrading it?
We are facing a daunting challenge: how to integrate AI into learning, work and life without degrading humanity, while avoiding regulations that could hinder honorable pursuits and empower malicious takeover of AI leadership. This razor’s edge is an existential mid-21st-century wisdom challenge for every leader, organization, institution and individual.
The wisest decision begins by considering and thoroughly understanding a question that can readily guide integration with AI’s power: “What makes us human?” While the answers to this question are within reach, grounded in both science and our lived experiences, they’re often overlooked amid the rapid pace of technological change. Wise decisions can be lost in the distortions of our ego, which seeks perfection and certainty.
History offers contrary guidance. Innovation has enhanced society and the quality of life since the beginning. Every innovation had its detractors and “Doomsday” scenarios, including fire, literacy, electricity, nuclear energy, computers, television, the internet and smartphones.
Every breakthrough attracts both visionaries and those who misuse its power. Innovation is never flawless at the start. It’s a continuous process of refinement, where society and leadership work to channel new capabilities toward progress while containing the risks of misuse. And what marks true leaders in times of rapid change and innovation is the ability to not just create what’s possible, but guide it toward outcomes that strengthen the greater good.
AI and robotics mimic human behavior and excel at certain tasks. However, crucially, they cannot share human capacities such as intuition, intimacy, self-awareness, moral reasoning and free will. We blind ourselves to serious trouble when we believe otherwise.
What are constructive priorities for leaders, companies and individuals implementing AI and robotics?
Intelligent automation will soon change how we learn, work, live and adapt to accelerating change and complexity. Leaders are poised to guide stakeholders, particularly employees, to adapt enthusiastically instead of fearfully resisting the inevitable.
1. Adopt cutting-edge stakeholder communications to demonstrate AI’s usefulness and improve organizational agility
Every CEO should create their own mission-and-data-bounded AI alter ego — a digital version of themselves — curated to engage in personalized one-on-one communications with each stakeholder, including employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders. This practice is projected to become the norm within only a few years. Showcasing one’s own AI alter ego demonstrates leadership and confidence in controlled AI applications. The virtual CEO’s first mission should be explaining how and why each stakeholder can thrive in the emerging new reality.
2. Preserve institutional knowledge to fill talent and productivity gaps as valuable employees retire
Every company leader knows that a small percentage of employees have an outsized effect on company success and are virtually irreplaceable. Historically, population growth ensured a steady supply of younger talent to replace retiring veterans; however, this is no longer the case. By 2035, adults over 65 will outnumber those under 18. To make matters worse, young people are growing up slower as lifespan has expanded, leaving young incumbents less prepared to replace retirees. For the first time, AI can capture institutional knowledge and expertise rapidly and inexpensively to teach and coach young replacements for the group that previously led the company.
3. Create a voluntary retirement extension plan
Few people retire today following an Industrial Age model. Many are healthy, active and eager to continue contributing, but with less intensity and time commitment. Some companies are experimenting with extended retiree-friendly employment, but a transportable, scalable model has yet to emerge. Retiree talent will be an invaluable asset in the near future.
4. Create an AI competition
Some of your employees are likely already ahead of the company’s leaders and technology staff in terms of AI knowledge. An idea to consider that also encourages potential collaboration and company engagement is to create a competition for 5-10 AI ideas with meaningful incentives and a set of stringent requirements (such as bounded, controllable, secure models; ROI in 12 months or less; improved productivity, products or services without replacing people, and scalable or replicable in other parts of the company).
Major innovations always carry both promise and a level of risk. There is no safe, stationary path, only a wise one that amplifies what makes us uniquely human while leveraging the potential of integrated intelligent automation. Hesitation is the greater danger; slow or uncertain adoption threatens economic stagnation, loss of competitiveness and deeper demographic decline.
This is the moment for decisive leadership. Those who move forward with clarity and confidence, unafraid to admit what they don’t yet know while acting on what they do, will define the next era of growth and human progress.