AI As Business Partner: Dispensing Advice, Handling The Paperwork

AI: picking up the slack. AI enables startups and corporate departments with limited resources to scale their business initiatives quickly, without the need to hire and train new workers. AI workers can handle the day to day stuff — reviewing documents, testing products, and communicating with customers — but that’s not all.

AI can assist in offering valuable objective advice. At the same time, there is an immutable truth about human AI partnerships. It still takes people to create and see innovations through, and please don’t leave all interactions with customers to the machines. Plus, people with a sense of AI design, development, and model training are in more demand than ever.

AI’s role is to serve as a way to get things off the ground. Current and aspiring business leaders "need to think of AI as something that can be hired to do a task," says says Leonard Dixon , assistant professor at the University of Denver. "While AI may be somewhat magical and a black box, it can be influenced to perform a task well." In the process, AI enables founders to launch businesses with fewer hires and resources.

For those involved in launching new ventures, AI "is dramatically reducing the hurdles involved in starting a business – from automating the review of necessary legal documents, to developing a website,” says Kian Katanforoosh , CEO and founder of Workera and lecturer at Stanford University.

AI usually doesn’t have an axe to grind, and may be able to serve as an unbiased advisor for business questions (not withstanding societal issues with AI bias). “Entrepreneurs often become emotionally invested in their ideas, which can sometimes lead to confirmation bias,” says Adrian McKnight , chief digital officer for WNS.

“Generative AI can counteract this by offering objective and independent assessments,” he explains. “It can simulate various customer personas, providing realistic market testing and interactive feedback. This approach allows entrepreneurs to refine their ideas based on AI generated insights, ensuring their concept is rigorously tested and validated.” Ultimately, the benefit of an AI co founder is its ability to help rapidly scale ideas — and not just simply by expanding on an innovator’s original concepts.

“While AI can improve the speed and quality of idea development, it is best used to augment their own thinking,” McKnight says. While people are the prime movers and decision makers for any business idea, “they must look at AI as an extremely capable partner in co creating their new business. It is the founder’s or entrepreneur’s responsibility to bring clarity of vision, and AI will always be the partner that needs their guidance and direction.” AI, by its very nature, “excels in analyzing and synthesizing vast amounts of data quickly and effectively,” McKnight adds.

“This is invaluable for critically assessing new business initiatives and building robust business cases, leading to more informed and effective decisions.” The key to developing such a digital workforce is to "identify the tasks where AI may be of assistance and then decide what level of human intelligence is required with this task," says Dixon.

With assisted intelligence, for example, "AI and humans collaborate on separate subtasks. An AI customer service agent could handle initial inquiries, with human agents addressing more complex issues," Dixon illustrates. "This setup allows for 24/7 service and multilingual support, potentially improving customer satisfaction." When launching a new venture, for instance, "non technical founders often faced the challenge of finding a technical co founder to even begin prototyping, creating a high barrier to entry and delaying the product testing phase," says Katanforoosh.

As a result, "AI and humans can jointly tackle tasks, amplifying human capabilities," Dixon says. "Tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Co Pilot enable users to expedite tasks such as creating presentations, significantly reducing preparation time." This is where AI can be employed "to help create innovative ideas and AI strategies." Bringing AI to its full potential, there is autonomous intelligence in which "AI operates independently, with humans supervising," Dixon says.

"Autonomous vehicles like Tesla are a great example because the car drives itself while still requiring human readiness to intervene if necessary." Dixon cites an example of AI playing the role of social media manager: a company could employ AI to "read all their company documentation to create a persona that could create post, video ideas, images, and more that are in line with company values.

The AI social media manager could even extract moods and emotions from responses to publications which can help the AI perform better future tasks." While humans will always be the font of innovation and creativity, AI's positive impact on these processes cannot be underestimated. "With innovation often stemming from serendipitous opportunities, it’s a helpful reminder that technology is not a replacement to human creativity or relationships," says Katanforoosh.

"That said, AI’s ability to systemize the mundane, busy work of many jobs will free up employees’ time for more impactful and meaningful work.".