Much of what is said about AI is misleading – or just plain wrong. It’s also sometimes intended to frighten everyone about a future that’s unlikely to occur (think Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Geoffrey Hinton, among others). AI will not steal children, hold hostages for bitcoins or start nuclear wars. But it will fundamentally change business through the intelligent automation of many routine – and nonroutine – tasks that companies perform all the time. Old business models will die as fast as new ones emerge. Whole industries will be reengineered, reinvented and reimagined. Some will be displaced altogether. Some industries will be disrupted in every sense of the word – in just three-to-five years. In fact, it’s already begun.

How Executives Should Think About AI: Straight Talk About the Inevitable prepares executives for the AI future. It’s not a complicated treatise on AI, or a theoretical look at how new technology can transform business models and processes. It’s a series of conversations masquerading as chapters designed to help executives quickly understand AI, what it can do and what they should do about AI, machine learning (ML) and generative AI (GenAI) right now. These conversations about AI are intended to get executives up to speed on AI, ML and GenAI so that they become “AI comfortable” in many ways, including launching a steady stream of demonstration prototypes to help their companies explore AI's capabilities and potential benefits.

These timely conversations can help executives understand how AI will impact their companies and their professional success. It’s straight talk about the most important technology since the Internet. Executives have no choice but to embrace AI to accomplish their professional goals. This book helps accomplish these goals. It helps them make decisions about what AI can and cannot do for their companies.