GPT Party 2.0. Management

Is the emergence of AI truly a revolution that can turn everything we know about solving business tasks upside down?

Andrey Golukhov: “Now, for the first time in history, humans are truly being replaced by entities that are practically equivalent in terms of intelligence. Can everything be automated? Certainly not, especially real-world processes. However, office processes, sales and marketing processes, and more will migrate dramatically into the field of artificial intelligence. This will result in colossal changes in the social structure of society.”

Alexander Vysotsky: “I believe that the process of implementing AI technologies will take not 2-3 years but a minimum of 10-15 years. We work with companies and see how sometimes it can be challenging to teach a person to simply follow a protocol, conduct meetings in a certain way, considering the amount of explanation, attention, and time it requires. I am not against AI, but to replace workers with artificial intelligence, you need to integrate them into the system. To build such a system, you need time. That’s why I believe more in industry-specific solutions that address specific needs of companies, and even these solutions will be challenging to implement. There will be an entire industry dedicated to the implementation of AI tools, much like CRM implementation is done today.

I think we are too optimistic. The question is not how quickly these tools will emerge and how powerful they will be, but how much time our society will need to adapt, transform, and embrace these technologies.”

In your opinion, will artificial employees increase or decrease the risks of a project failing?

Nick Spirin: “You can look at the application of AI for management from different angles. Suppose there is a specific job vacancy. We break it down into a set of specific tasks and see how current technologies can handle a subset of these operations. This is what we call an AI-powered system. There is also the concept of an AI-augmented system, where artificial intelligence assists but does not replace humans. In this case, a person becomes a more skilled superhero, with a co-pilot who allows them to handle more tasks or do so more quickly. It’s possible not to fully automate but to create business value in the process.

I believe that digital employees will reduce risks because they are a more predictable business unit. The question is what role we can assign to this virtual employee within the team. For example, something new that we couldn’t afford before due to its cost, such as the facilitation function. This helps monitor team dynamics and improve the quality of work.”

Do corporations aim to turn their employees into cogs to quickly replace them? Can business be decomposed in such a way that tasks are so simple for the end employee that all of them can be replaced with not very smart but free and easily scalable virtual employees?

Alexander Vysotsky: “I have heard this idea several times in one form or another, that the goal of any corporation is to turn a person into a cog to be independent of that cog. I can say that from a management perspective, it’s the opposite. As a leader in my business, I want many talented people to work with us, take maximum responsibility, develop, and contribute to the company that I founded. When you are in business, there comes a moment when you want to keep growing and sincerely admire your employees, not give them advice and encourage their leadership development. Only in this way can you build a large company that can respond to market challenges, grow, and so on. In this model, the idea of making employees cogs in the machine to get rid of them never even crossed my mind. My challenge is finding talented individuals, attracting them, and getting them interested in being part of our team. That’s my challenge.”