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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Imagine a world where marketing managers oversee AI copywriters, sales leaders direct AI-powered CRM systems, and engineers supervise code-generating agents. This is already starting to happen. By 2030, AI is projected to displace 92 million jobs while creating 170 million new ones, according to the World Economic Forum. Rather than replacing humans, AI is redefining their roles. In the near future, individual contributors will transition into AI managers who orchestrate workflows between human creativity and machine efficiency. Instead of coding or other technical skills, the most sought-after skill of tomorrow will be the ability to manage AI systems and teams of AI agents effectively. The key to surviving this shift? AI literacy. The AI literacy divide: Beyond hype to practical mastery A recent study from Deloitte found that only 20% of leaders feel the talent at their organizations is prepared to deploy AI successfully. Many assume AI integration requires hiring armies of machine learning engineers. This misconception is as outdated as believing every company needs a team of electrical engineers to use lightbulbs. AI is infrastructure, not magic. You dont need to understand AI transformer architectures any more than you need to grasp TCP/IP protocols to send an email. The problem for most organizations is simply that employees dont know how to leverage AI tools effectively. The challenge for leaders today, then, lies in bridging the gap between awareness and applied proficiency. The three pillars of AI literacy The good news is that anyone can learn AI literacy. Todays business leaders can start by building their teams, and their own skills in three core areas of AI literacy: understanding what AI can do, improving prompting skills, and managing AIs limitations. 1. Generative AI awareness AI evolves faster than human intuition. Six months ago, ChatGPT couldnt generate realistic images (remember the people with tiny teeth?). Today, tools like Midjourney v6 produce photorealistic outputs indistinguishable from human-created content. 2. AI prompting proficiency Effective AI use requires structured prompts. For example, I use a 5C prompting framework: clarity, contextualization, command, chaining, and continuous refinement. Clarity: Start with a clear and specific task for the AI agent. A marketer might start with, generate 10 search ads for an online learning solution. Context: Then, share relevant context. Continuing the example above, the marketer might add details about their company, define the audience for the ad, and state the goals of the ad campaign. Command: Here, I specify what the output should look like. The marketer might include, format the 10 search ads in a table, including relevant SEO keywords as an additional column. Limit each ad to 100 characters. Chaining: This is also known as chain of thought prompting. Spell out the specific tasks youd like the AI agent to complete and in what order. The marketer might say, Start by reviewing recent ads from X, Y, and Z learning companies. Continuous refinement: The final step will depend on the output from the AI agent. Its up to you, the human, to review the output and ask for revisions from your AI agent as needed. 3. Manage limitations AI hallucination rates hover around 3% for top modelsa small percentage, but one that can have huge impacts. Human oversight of AI outputs is critical. When an AI-generated legal brief cited non-existent cases a few years ago, it wasnt the tool that failed; it was the human who skipped verification. Build an AI-literate organization For hiring managers and business leaders, an easy place to start is by embedding AI literacy into job descriptions. For example: In the 1990s, just about every job that involved computers asked for Excel proficiency. Soon, AI workflow design will define many of tomorrows roles. To get your teams ready for this shift, prioritize hands-on AI training at your company. Reading about AI is like learning to swim from a book. Eventually, you need to dive in to gain mastery of the tools. This doesnt mean that soft skills no longer matterin fact its quite the opposite. Leaders should be helping their teams refine the human skills that will matter most in the near future. A few of these include strategic decision making, to ensure AI agents are carrying out the right tasks to meet business goals, and empathetic communication to lead, inspire, and collaborate effectively with other humans. AI as an amplifier of human potential History shows that rather than eliminating the need for human skills, technological revolutions amplify it. While the printing press reduced demand for scribes, it also created publishers, journalists, and educatorsand ultimately, led to increased rates of literacy across the globe. Similarly, rather than replace humans, AI will empower those who master it to achieve new levels of productivity and innovation. The most successful organizations will be those that view AI not as a threat, but as a force multiplier. By investing in AI literacy today, business leaders are doing more than future-proofing their workforce; theyre unlocking human potential to solve problems once deemed impossible. The question isnt whether AI will change peoples jobs. Its whether youll be the one wielding itor watching from the sidelines. Tigran Sloyan is cofounder and CEO of CodeSignal.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Most of us have heard the phrase supply chain disruption a few times too many in recent years. An extreme weather event or material shortage in one corner of the earth can ripple through thousands of global businesses, causing major delays. As the CEO of a company that builds data centers for some of the biggest technology providers in the world, its a concept Im all too familiar with. Its also one I refuse to accept as blanket reality. Truth is that many supply chain disruptions are born out of the transactional nature of supplier-business partnerships. Companies over-rotate on getting the lowest prices for materials and components, and in the process they miss an opportunity to pursue high quality, collaborative relationships with suppliers. My company set out to reimagine the supply chain a few years ago. We wanted to make our supply chain flexible, resilient, and a powerful source of innovation. The benefits have been countless: better utilization, faster timelines, lower total cost, new product and service models, and partners to help us thrive in a rapidly growing and changing industry. So how did we get here? We reframed the relationship and changed how we get the job done. We dont have a procurement function; we have an innovation function. This way of thinking and working was a natural extension of already strong, decade-long relationships. Anything but transactional The bottom line is, we treat suppliers like partners. Recognizing that no one is immune to supply chain disruptions, in 2021, we started meeting with our suppliers more frequently, at least weekly. These meetings gave us a chance to ask questions, better understand the issues, and avoid surprises. That transparency goes in all directions. We also meet with our customers frequently, relaying updates on potential issues. We take an all-hands-on-deck approach to keeping available materials in the pipeline, so projects stay on track. This transparency means we can find ways to mitigate the impact of supply chain disruptions in real time. According to McKinsey, companies that regularly collaborate with suppliers see higher growth, lower operating costs, and better profitability than peers. That makes a lot of sense. The collaboration that has come from our supply chain has certainly paid dividends. Problem solving with partners is a two-way street As data center development skyrocketed at the beginning of the decade, our partner Schneider Electric, who provides prefabricated power modules for data centers, needed to expand its footprint and bring additional integration facilities onlineand fast. We invited them to be our neighbor. We had land, power, and the ability to build the type of facility they needed. Schneider could expand without taking on too much risk and didnt need to start from scratch to find land, secure power, and develop building plans. Now, Schneider can integrate our power centers and test our uninterruptible power supplies close to our campus. This collaborative approach resulted in faster delivery times and improved efficiency across the board. There was so much trust between our two companies, it guaranteed that we were working toward a common goal and making us better able to weather the inevitable challenges. Intimacy might be the mother of invention Close partnerships with suppliers also allow you to respond to market forces faster. Because of our close ties with Vertiv, we shaved months off the timeline to develop a new cooling system to meet the requirements of AI. Our customers were eager to adopt AI quickly, but not ready to say goodbye to traditional CPUs nor go down the high-cost path of a data center redesign or retrofit. To solve the challenge, we had to think inside the box and figure out how to adapt liquid cooling within our existing footprint. Retrofitting and re-engineering the buildings wasnt an option from a cost and timeline perspective. The result was a system that allowed deployments of AI to flex between air and liquid cooling, achieving the flexibility and energy efficiency our clients required while supporting the high-density computing needed for AI. Our engineers collaborated with Vertivs on this solution, and the initial units are already being deployed. With todays breakneck pace of AI innovation and adoption, this level of close collaboration was absolutely critical to meeting customer demand. One thing I know for sure: The supply chain can always improve. It can always be more flexible, more efficient, more resilient. Who knows where else well go with these partners, but knowing we share a continuous improvement mindset means every time theres a problem, well roll up our sleeves and figure it out. Temporary challenges always become long-term advantages if you use them to discover better ways of doing things. A closely-coupled supply chain is the future Transforming the supply chain takes time, significant effort, and most importantly, mutual trust. Coming together with your suppliers can create transparency. It can also create a continuous improvement mindset. With flexible approaches, you tackle challenges and innovate together. You create relationships that become your competitive differentiator and are valued from the C-suite all the way to the field. Thats what a closely-coupled supply chain means to me, and I wouldnt have it any other way. Chris Crosby is CEO of Compass Datacenters.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Ive always considered immersive multimedia experiences as a medium that chips away at solitude. But never did I expect wed slide so far down the path of loneliness that it would be considered a global public health concern, an epidemic of loneliness, or a threat as harmful as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Its official: Were living in an age of social isolation. And, yet, weve never been this connected. Advances in technology have bridged previously insurmountable distances, keeping friends and families in close and constant contact, and given us the ability to build and sustain communities in ways, and on scales, once unfathomable. For many, theyve proven indispensable for sharing ideas, expressing emotions, and offering support. Every single day, billions of text messages ping-pong across the world weaving us into a state of hyperconnection. So, why do we feel so alone? Connections should be social, not just digital At the heart of this paradox are two overlapping trends: a growing retreat from the physical world and a deepening plunge into the digital one. The internet has so overwhelmingly overhauled how we relate to each other and our world, that we now think of connections, friends, and engagement as the stuff of digitalnot physicallife. More and more, the same can be said for shopping, playing, working, and dating. Occupied by doom-scrolling for dopamine hits, binge-watching content on demand, and being otherwise swallowed into the glow of our devices, Americans are spending 20% less time socializing in person than they did two decades agoand plenty more within the comforts and confines of their own homes.But humans are social beings that evolved in close, physical proximity to other social beingsand are hardwired to feel better that way. Our need for social connection runs so deep that its been found to be as fundamental as our need for food, water, and shelter. Studies show that simply looking someone in the eyes can synchronize brain waves; physical touch releases feel-good hormones key for comfort and connection; and someones scent can convey their emotional state and trigger empathy in those around them. More than just a bad feeling or even an epidemic, our loneliness is a valuable sign that we arent spending enough time together. Its telling us that being chronically online may not be enough to combat isolationeven more, it might be getting in the way of the real-world closeness we need most. Real connection requires real presence In our digitally-driven world, entertainment that presents a compelling case to leave the comforts of home and gather in the real world, feels more necessary than ever. Grounded in space and in time, immersive experiences create the sense of being part ofand part of creatinga shared reality, unique and precious in its fleetingness. But immersive experiences arent just about bringing people physically together; theyre about making them feel together, too. After all, havent we all stood in a crowd, surrounded by others, only to feel completely and utterly alone, together?With interactive storytelling, multisensory environments, and digital art stretching into 3D, immersive experiences rely on new technologies to counter some of the very issues theyve been blamed for causing. They invite us to engage with our environment, to feed off each others emotions, to linger in the in-between, and ultimately connect to something real. The goal isnt an intensity that takes you out of your body, but rather an attention and presence that brings you deeper into itonly to then be collectively transported into something bigger. These experiences have a way of bringing us back to a simple truth: There are some moments that can only be shared in the here and in the now.So, perhaps the real challenge isnt resisting the pull of new technologies, but finding ways for them to inspire connection. Our designs can invite meaningful participation, create moments of empathy, and embrace the wonderfully unfiltered chaos of real life. With each new innovation, what constitutes togetherness will keep evolving. But if we prioritize depth over distraction, and immersion over detachment, the experiences we create can be part of what makes the world a little less lonely, after all.Now, its up to us to design them. Sakchin Bessette is cofounder and executive creative director at Moment Factory.
Category:
E-Commerce
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