Should I embrace artificial intelligence? I’ve been told it could revolutionise my business

Straight-talking, common sense from the front line of management

Q I don’t really know much about artificial intelligence, but I want to understand how it will affect my online fashion business. I have been approached by an AI consultant who claims he can revolutionise the way we do business and promises a major improvement in efficiency and substantial reductions in our headcount. Have I got to embrace the world of AI to stay competitive?

A Seventy years ago, we at Timpson were in a similar situation when computers offered a better way to run our day-to-day business.

There were plenty of teething problems. A computer company sold us a “total stock control solution”, but a big room full of air-conditioned kit was barely capable of monitoring the stock in our warehouse. After four years of development and two computer upgrades, we had automated our branch supply system and no longer had the 50 clerks who used Kalamazoo sheets and adding machines. Our ancestors faced a similar transformation during the Industrial Revolution when a production line of machines replaced manual artisan skills. In the 18th century, it was impossible to imagine how much the machine age would change everybody’s lives – the same is true today for AI.

Every three years, I write the Chairman’s Annual Report looking 15 years ahead. It is a good way to think beyond today’s world and produce a forecast that differs from most five-year plans that are seldom much more than an extrapolation of recent trends. In the early years of this crystal ball gazing, I had some success – I forecast the rapid fall of shoe repairing, growth of key cutting and the potential of ID photos. It will be a much more difficult task next year when I have to predict what will be happening in 2040. By then, AI will be dominating our lives.

When computers started to beat chess masters, we should have realised they would soon be able to out-think the brightest decision-makers.

My favourite definition of intelligence is “the ability to perceive relationships between relationships”, which describes the difference between computers that add up and computers that think.

In 1960, we were about to say goodbye to the typing pool and the 50 clerks in our finance department. Today, artificial intelligence could put us all at risk of redundancy.

Indeed, perhaps I should use AI to produce my forecast of the world in 2040. We won’t need to spend a long weekend in the Algarve to thrash out a five-year plan when we could put a computer on the group board as the Director of Everything, using its superior brain to forecast capital investment, control cash flow and monitor our compliance to all the regulations on the Government’s behalf. Mention of the Government prompts me to suggest that AI has a massive potential in Whitehall, where it could give even the cleverest civil servants a run for their money.

One smart computer could replace everyone at the Office for National Statistics. Another could run the Office for Budget Responsibility. If it does well it could be promoted to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and even be shortlisted to be the next governor.

If all that works, it can’t be long before AI goes to Downing Street, gets the top job and appears in the Commons answering Prime Minister’s Questions.

By allowing my imagination to wander down Downing Street, I have highlighted a couple of implications of AI. First, who controls the computer? Has anyone got the authority to overrule a conclusion calculated by such a superior brain? Secondly, if every company is controlled by computers, then they will all come to the same conclusions, so how can we have a competitive marketplace when no company displays an individual point of difference?

Happily, my 15-year future forecasts always lead to the same conclusion and 2040 is no different. Despite all the changes, the vital ingredient of an organisation’s success is still its people. AI may give us more brainpower but we need star performers that provide the personality.

To put it another way, could a computer replace Pep Guardiola?