University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Working with AI
Book

Working with AI

Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration

Steven Miller and Thomas H. Davenport
MIT Press, 2022
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • For Beginners

Recommendation

The future of work is already here. Sectors as diverse as public transit and advertising are using AI today. In this eye-opening book, information technology experts Steven Miller and Thomas H. Davenport examine examples of successful workplace AI integration. They go beyond statistics to paint a detailed picture of the current effects of AI on the way people work and highlight questions about the future. Whether you are concerned about AI’s effects on your own work or considering spearheading AI adoption within your organization, you’ll find valuable insights in Miller and Davenport’s text.

Summary

AI automation involves rules-based systems as well as machine learning systems.

AI engineers build rules-based systems using multiple if-then statements. They train machine learning systems on labeled data. The machine learning systems are able to detect patterns in this data that they then deploy to interpret unlabeled data. In the workplace, AI performs numerous functions, including:

  • Predictions
  • Recommendations
  • Rankings (such as for sales leads)
  • Finding specific information in a document
  • Process automation

AI automation and augmentation in the workplace is already widespread and observable in many workplaces today. At Morgan Stanley, AI provides personalized recommendations for products and programs based on a client’s specific profile and portfolio. The financial advisor decides on the relevance of the prompts based on their personal knowledge of the client. This allows for more efficient communication with clients, since AI can effectively tailor recommendations to each client to a degree that human advisors would not have time to do. Advisors report that, with the help of the ...

About the Authors

Thomas H. Davenport is a Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College and a senior AI advisor to Deloitte Analytics. Steven Miller is Professor Emeritus of Information Systems at Singapore Management University.

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