A.I.

In the Sci-Fi thriller ‘Transcendence’ Artificial Intelligence allows the main character to upload his mind to the internet where it lives on after his body dies. Through access to planet-wide computing power his abilities quickly multiply. However he slowly comes to realise that he has created a monster that threatens humanity. Urged by his surviving human consciousness and love for his wife, he himself introduces a virus that destroys everything he has made. He has eschewed immortality for human frailty. Appreciative Inquiry is a process whereby natural talents of a workforce are discovered and matched to organisational goals in ways defined by the workforce itself. This encourages buy-in at all levels as staff ‘bring their whole selves to work’. Cynics might dismiss AI as a new management tool to squeeze blood from a stone, or to get something for nothing by adding another burden to an already stretched workforce. Certainly it requires faith to abandon tough controls on business functions in favour of group designed processes in the hope that they can be more successful. Indeed employee suggestions can also seem counterintuitive and even foolish. Zimbabwean Ecologist Allan Savory, when tasked with halting desertification of the savannah, believed that he needed to cull elephant numbers to reduce foliage predation. He got it horribly wrong and only after thousands of elephants had died did he discover that desertification had accelerated. Counterintuitively it was by introducing herds of animals to almost barren land that he discovered the power of their combined action. Land lost to desertification was being restored to grassland. Allan Savory had to consider the much wider ecological system interactions and the natural intelligence of the herd. Most interestingly he discovered that the animal herds he introduced needed only minimal food from the land in order to start the regeneration process. Perhaps it is an unfortunate coincidence that the letters A.I. are used to denote both Artificial Intelligence and Appreciative Inquiry but it is clear that the optimum outcomes for humanity and our planet occur when we work together with nature rather than in opposition to it. When either species of A.I. is used to exploit resources for strictly financial gain the efforts are doomed to failure. Indeed, such efforts could lead to the failure of our own species.