LEADERSHIP
intuition, emotions and ethical views, as well as – and much more importantly – a unique and human perspective of life with meaning and value. Assuming that NOI does not possess a ‘conscience’, it is imperative that leaders keep control of the ethical dimension of decisions and initiatives in the partnership. Is it good for us? Is this what we want? Can we ensure the partnership delivers what is required and how can we avoid any deviation? Moreover, leaders must keep in mind that algorithms today have – and presumably will have more so tomorrow – the ability to reinvent themselves, so this could have serious and unintended consequences. The leaders of today should not lose sight of critical questions such as who will have the power to lead the partnership with NOI? Can we already foresee the potential evolution of artificial intelligence? What comes next? The new ‘invisible hand’ It was renowned Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith who said: “They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided in equal portions among all its inhabitants.” It seems true that NOI is pushing us towards new forms of being, both individually and socially, leading to the birth of what we might term Homo Numericus . Once again, we are experiencing a revolution in our human conscience and existence. Nobody can predict what’s going to happen to us and yet we can state the following with certainty: non-organic intelligence is just what we need to successfully deal with the major issues that humans have created through greed and environmental damage. There is a possibility that we have missed out on a stage in our evolution as living beings. Besides the numerous benefits associated with non-organic intelligence, there is a negative scenario we must face: namely, the reduction of privacy in our lives. Are we getting into the 1984 way of living as described by George Orwell? Are we losing control over our destiny? Our survival as a species requires a dramatic change in the way we organise ourselves at a global level. The challenge is time; we do not have much time left to re-invent the way we manage our collective life on the planet. Pessimism is not going to help us survive or ensure that the next generation will have a chance to live better lives. A new type of leadership is in order; it is up to all of us to redefine and fight for it. Maybe the new invisible hand will take care of it. But will it ever be able to care in the same way that humans do?
out by NOI. This challenge has a tremendous impact on the re- orientation and reskilling of those workers whose competencies have fallen out of favour. Then there’s the advancement of security policies. With NOI in place, many security concerns will arise regarding the proper use of algorithms; leaders have to address and resolve these issues to make cooperation with NOI safe and reliable. We also have to contend with a major redefinition regarding business vision and how a company operates, including the necessity to partner with NOI. Many organisations such as Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, TikTok, Meta and Google are becoming key catalysts in reshaping our human lives. Besides these challenges, leaders must also keep in mind that the use of algorithms in teams and organisations will bring many new ethical issues to light. Certainly, one of them is regarding the notion of responsibility, meaning who exactly is in charge? Looking to tomorrow We are approaching a brand-new world that features hitherto unknown leadership issues and requirements. Obviously, the leaders of tomorrow will have to make faster decisions based on both intuition and facts, as well as relying increasingly on NOI for the collection of facts and the identification of tentative solutions. Leaders will also have to focus on the ethical aspect of all possible actions. Non-organic leadership implies that leaders must learn to use and trust the new form of data processing and decision-making. It is not a question of controlling the power of artificial intelligence, since we believe that is already beyond our human control, but establishing an active partnership with it – something called ‘hybrid intelligence’. This is a partnership characterised by an integration of input coming from both parties, resulting in a new alliance between human and non-organic minds. We already experienced that in the past to some extent when we initiated a partnership between the human mind and the machines we invented. On this basis, the partnership with non-organic intelligence can provide rapid access to a great amount of data; provide an interconnected and logically reliable analysis of facts; and identify and suggest various options for decisions and actions. Human beings, on the other hand, will bring to the table their
BIOGRAPHIES Professor Pierre Casse is the leadership chair at IEDC-Bled School of Management in Slovenia and the author of Leadership without concessions and Leadership for a new world , as well as the co-author with Paul George Claudel of Leading with wisdom . Elnura Irmatova is a researcher and DBA candidate at the school
Ambition APRIL 2023 | 17
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