The definitive guide to AI for the board pack by Maximilien van Gaver published by Board Intelligence (11/2023).
“Since late 2022 and the release of ChatGPT, a new crop of “generative artificial intelligence” tools has been taking AI out of academia and into the mainstream. Yet, one year on, it remains unclear what this technology means for boards of directors and the main instrument they rely on to do their job — the board pack.
What makes today’s AI different from yesterday’s — and why should you care?
Generative AI builds on past breakthroughs in the field of machine learning, namely neural networks and deep learning — systems that don’t need to be told what exact steps to follow but can simply be given an end goal and find out by themselves how to reach it through trial-and-error. These have transformed tasks long thought out-of-reach such as image recognition, making it possible to, say, identify who’s who in a picture or spot tumours in a CT scan.
How generative AI differs from its predecessors is twofold. First, it can tackle much more varied problems (not “just” answer “Does that lump look cancerous?” but also “What are the key risks highlighted in this report?” and everything in between). And second, it can be interacted with through natural speech. That means most of us can find some use for generative AI and can use it without being a data scientist — and that’s what makes it so powerful and popular…”
