Human leadership in an AI world
Jocelyn Burnham (aiforculture.com) is a speaker and trainer who has been commissioned by organisations including Tate, Shakespeare’s Globe and Arts Council England to create workshops and educational resources on the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Here (and in her video accompanying this article), she discusses how creative leaders can take tangible steps to begin their learning journey with the technology.
We’re all in the same boat
In the past year, I’ve been going around the country and having a lot of conversations with people in the creative and heritage world about AI. The experience has been genuinely energising: a flurry of diverse opinions and emotions arise when my colleagues discuss the topic. But that said, the most persistent emotions are universal in every group: anxiety (even fear) and overwhelm.
So let’s take a moment or two to acknowledge that and practice some self-empathy. There’s no value in rushing towards discussions around innovation or digital literacy if we’re working against the resistance of our emotions at every turn. AI is going to be with us the rest of our careers; finding techniques today to make learning and application an enjoyable process is a dividend worth investing energy to achieve.
Before looking forward, let’s look back
I find analogies helpful, and one I return to often is to consider the popular emergence of the Internet in the 1990s.
Looking back from today’s perspective, we know that developing a practical understanding of the internet wasn’t based purely on finding the “best” website or the “best” method of saving time, but it instead arose from a broader appreciation about its purpose and evolving nature. We discovered that its value arose from how it connected us to our audiences, visitors and colleagues in new ways; how it changed the nature of what’s possible in our work; and how, year after year, it continues to transform and develop in unknown new ways.
If you remember living through the rise of the internet, you’re in a brilliant position to learn about AI: you’ve already adapted to a fundamental technological shift, and you can draw on those lessons to guide your mindset and resilience here. And if you’re a little younger, you have the advantage of growing up in a world where rapid technological change is the norm – and you’re at the forefront of a generation that will shape how AI is used in creative industries for decades to come.
Try
No matter what you read or learn about AI, nothing will replace first-hand experimentation to better appreciate the capability for these tools and what significance they might have to your working life.
There is often a great deal of hesitancy to do this, partly because people might not know where to begin, and partly because of concerns about data privacy and organisational policies. It should go without saying that all AI usage should align with GDPR and organisational policy, but it’s also not necessary to share sensitive data (beyond your email address) with any of these tools to test them out first-hand.
I also encourage you to experiment with a wide range of generative AI tools, and to avoid the tendency to see their only abilities as relating to copywriting. AI’s applications can potentially go much further: they can ‘translate’ academic articles into tailored, tangible insights you can explore; they can help you explore (non-sensitive) data in natural language to make new discoveries; they can critique your work and make suggestions for making your content more accessible (both to your audiences and your colleagues), among much else.
(Not sure where to start? I’ve made a short video, exclusive to Clore readers, where I show you some starting options you might find interesting and enjoyable to look at. Click here to watch.)
As you experiment, you’ll naturally begin to make connections about how these tools might impact your work, or perhaps enable your team to take advantage of opportunities that were previously out of your reach. As you progress, you’ll also build up irreplaceable first-hand critical awareness: you’ll begin to better appreciate the biases and censorship these tools are subject to, and from that knowledge you might better envision precautions you might advise about their use.
Talk
Alongside your personal experiments, it’s essential that you create space in your organisations for conversations about AI and the concerns, discoveries or applications which others have encountered. Currently, there is a lot of hesitancy for people in the creative sector (especially those who might be more junior colleagues) to even admit that they’re experimenting with these tools. By giving room for these discussions, you can better ensure that you and your team are using this technology safely, and you create an opportunity to share your collective (and evolving) knowledge with one another.
Trust
I also invite you to continue practicing trust with your colleagues, as we find ourselves entering the age of AI. New technology and new ways of working can be unsettling, and there are undoubtedly risks which your team should be aware of, but in the same manner that we ultimately trust our teams to use their email accounts and the internet responsibly, I would suggest that the same might be true for AI. With trust comes dialogue, and with dialogue comes learning and innovation.
With that said, it can certainly be productive to create some general staff guidance documentation around AI usage, along with offering some proactive suggestions about tools or experiments they might find interesting to try themselves.
Going further
Ultimately, we are entering unchartered waters, and even if a perfect textbook to AI could be written today it would quickly find itself out of date. The most productive thing you can likely do for learning about AI is to get into the habit of safely trying it yourself, seeking multiple perspectives, and trusting your own instincts. Your journey doesn’t need to be perfect – it just needs to begin. And who knows: it might even be an enjoyable one.
You can connect with Jocelyn and find out more about her work with AI on her LinkedIn here.
