Leadership in the Age of AI

Recently, I attended a fireside chat in which the moderator asked the panelists how leadership would change with the disruptions brought by AI. This got me to reflect on the delta in leadership required in today’s AI world, noting that failing to adapt and adopt AI will result in being overtaken (and killed) by competitors.

To assist me in this reflection, I revisited my blog written two years ago on the “Framework of the Work of a Leader”. (You can find the original blog post here). I then overlay this with my assessments of the developments in AI.

My key takeaway is that while the work of a leader will not change fundamentally, there are certain areas that demand greater attention from the leader. In particular, “Leading Change” stands out and can be further examined as follows:

1. Anticipate Change
Leaders should explore and analyze the driving forces that can either disrupt their current operating model or create opportunities for growth. AI is a major driving force today: since the launch of ChatGPT in Nov 2022, we have seen tech providers releasing many new capabilities in a rapid pace (e.g. GPT-4, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude 3 Opus, and Llama 3–70B), and the best practices in adopting them have changed as well.