Mike Walsh: Why Business Leaders Need to Understand Their Algorithms

Mike Walsh

Mike Walsh, leading futurist, in his recent Harvard Business Review article, argued that business leaders need to understand their algorithms, to ensure that the technology is not optimised for unintended outcomes.

Read further to see his views:

One of the biggest sources of anxiety about AI is not that it will turn against us, but that we simply cannot understand how it works.

The rationale behind algorithmic regulation is accountability. Making AI more explainable is not just about reassuring leaders that they can trust algorithmic decisions; it is also about providing recourse for people to challenge AI-based decisions. In fact, the issue of algorithmic transparency applies not only to machine learning, but also to any algorithm whose inner workings are kept hidden.

However, for leaders, the most important question to ask the teams designing and building automated solutions may be not why they reached a particular decision, but rather what are they being optimized for?

Read the rest of the article here.

Mike Walsh

Mike Walsh is the CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy on designing business for the 21st century. His expertise is giving leaders advise on how to thrive in this era of disruptive technological change. Mikes travels the world over 300 days a year, interviewing innovators, entrepreneurs and corporate revolutionaries to give his clients and audiences the freshest and best vision of tomorrow’s opportunities.

Mike has delivered close to a thousand keynote speeches to companies in almost every industry around the globe. In 2014, Mike was invited to be a main stage keynote speaker at the renowed Million Dollar Round Table where his customized presentation reached more than 8,000 people.

Aside from being a favored speaker to several global Fortune 500 companies, Mike is also a prolific writer. His international publications include articles in BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of the best-selling book FUTURETAINMENT (published by Phaidon and winner of the design award by the Art Director’s Club in New York) and The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas.

Mike was the founder of Jupiter Research (Australia), was a senior strategist at News Corporation (Asia Pacific Region). He is currently a board member and strategic investor in the North Alliance, Scandinavia’s leading digital marketing group.

Contact us if you would like to engage Mike Walsh for your next event.