Nine Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work
April 8, 2024
In this substantial business manual, De Cremer (Leadership by Algorithm), the dean of Northeastern University’s business school, urges executives and managers to augment, rather than replace, human workers with AI. Outlining nine principles for integrating the technology into one’s workflow, De Cremer argues, for instance, that AI should primarily be used to automate simple tasks so employees can spend more time on creative aspects of their job. He encourages managers to “develop a human-centered approach” and warns that an unnamed company’s decision to use AI to monitor workers’ progress on various projects resulted in more mistakes and higher turnover, which the author attributes to employees feeling “as if they were being treated like robots.” The suggestions manage the difficult task of giving meaningful guidance while staying broad enough to apply across a variety of contexts, such as when De Cremer entreats readers to rank “repetitive and manual” tasks by effort or cost and then research “AI-based solutions to those problems.” De Cremer’s insistence that AI is no substitute for human workers gives the lie to unrealistic techno-utopian promises, and he demonstrates a refreshing willingness to topple corporate shibboleths, as when he warns that “efficiency isn’t everything” because the moments of human inspiration that AI can’t yet replicate rarely happen on a predictable timeline. This will make executives think twice before replacing their employees with software.