To be clear, the unfolding story of generative AI is one of significant risk and reward. It makes chatbots, internet search results, and business platforms more engaging and helpful. Tedious time-sinks like data entry now happen in minutes, not hours. There’s even an app that translates visual data into audio descriptions, making the world and the office more accessible. Digital personal assistant, anyone?

Organizations could build their own in-house generative AI tools and train them on their proprietary data for any number of business applications — and our collective ideas will only swell in the coming months. Entire industries will emerge, evolve and shrink starting with this moment. 

With continued advancements, companies will continue to find ways to leverage generative AI in ways that add value and minimize risk. For, while there is business risk, the opportunity to drive up productivity by utilizing the same workforce (augmented by AI) in new ways and the chance to make jobs more attractive is just too big to overlook. It’s best to get ahead.

The one truth to hold in our minds is that humans plus AI deliver the real advantage — and we must actively manage this. Therefore, the role of CPOs in shaping how we grasp and prepare for the impacts on our businesses, our leaders, our workforce and society has never been more acute. The good news is that AI has the potential to help level and even expand the playing field as we all learn together.

Mercer is a Marsh McLennan company. We help companies with people, risk and strategy.