With artificial intelligence transforming all aspects our work and lives, this year’s alumni symposium tackled the theme of Navigating the AI no-return journey, exploring the risks and opportunities associated with the explosive growth in the technology.
Ralph Haupter, EMEA President at Microsoft, outlined the $4 trillion economic opportunity presented by AI and challenged leaders to identify how deploying the tool can generate return on investment within their specific business context.
“We have this unique moment in time, where we get this technology in our hands that we will never have again in our professional lives,” he told some 250 alumni gathered in Lausanne. “We are the only ones who can make the decision about how it is used in the right way, to have the impact we all dream of.”
IMD’s Chief Innovation Officer Sarah Toms drew parallels between the current resistance to AI and past rejection of other groundbreaking technologies such as the wheel, the printing press, and even the number zero.
To get started on IMD’s AI journey, she outlined how the business school asked two simple questions: Where is education limited today? And what potential can we unlock with AI?
Is it time to join the circus?
On the second day of the symposium, Professor of Strategy and Leadership Michael Yaziji picked up the baton by exploring which AI capabilities would evolve over the next five years, and, crucially, what impact this would have on the value of human skills.
In the past, manual and repetitive jobs were the first to be impacted by technological advancements. However, this time, Yaziji predicts that expensive knowledge workers may have targets on their backs.
Conversely, roles that require coordination, relationship-building, context-specific knowledge and the ability to motivate others will remain in demand. “The safest I probably think are circus performers, ballerinas, and schoolteachers, so that’s where I am leading my children,” joked Yaziji.
The evolving risk landscape
With deepfake scams on the rise and AI models vulnerable to attacks by adversaries, Öykü Işık, Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity, dug into the topic of how organizations can manage the risks associated with using generative AI. Her focus included ensuring its ethical use, avoiding the perpetuation of bias, safeguarding data, and promoting sustainability in AI practices.
She urged business leaders to understand where their data was coming from, how much energy their AI consumes, to be proactive about assessing risk, and to be transparent to consumers and authorities about their organization’s use of AI. “These are super reasonable, logical, responsible, behavior-related questions that all organizations should be able to apply,” she said.
The biggest underutilized factor of production
For all the risks and opportunities, José Parra-Moyano, a Professor of Digital Strategy, highlighted the untapped potential of data as a critical factor of production.
Less than 5% of data is actively utilized, presenting significant economic opportunities, especially if companies, and even individuals, collaborate to combine their data. “We need to occupy ourselves to better understand this new way of creating value in the economy,” urged Parra-Moyano.
While data offers tremendous value, balancing its use with privacy protection remains critical. One way of solving this dilemma is through innovative business models like data cooperatives where you can share insights from the data, rather than the raw data, he said.
Real-world insights
During an insightful panel moderated by Tomoko Yokoi, AI and Digital Transformation Researcher at the TONOMUS Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation, IMD alumni shared their experiences implementing AI across their organizations, from deploying AI-powered chatbots in customer service units to developing enterprise-wide AI strategies for multinational corporations.
Corinne Avelines (MBA 2009), Strategy Consultant at Kinetic Consulting, emphasized the importance of identifying clear business problems and use cases for AI to drive success.
Benjamin Torben-Nielsen (EMBA 2023), Partner & Co-founder at Claritys.AI and a former Roche executive, highlighted the need for getting buy-in from top management on AI initiatives, noting, “Make sure your board is on board. If you haven’t crystallized as a company what you want from AI, you can’t communicate it to any of the leaders under you.”
Thomas Moons (MBA 2005), Co-founder at OrangeCoat and a former Shell executive, cautioned against over-reliance on a single AI vendor, while Vahid Marc Khamsi (MBA 2009), SVP at SAP, underscored the importance of reskilling the workforce to prioritize empathy and business understanding as technical skills become less central.
AI and the sustainability conundrum
In coming years, AI will power our economies in ever more ways and will be deployed across robotics, medicine, autonomous vehicles, space exploration, and energy management, said Fabio Fontana, Chief Growth Officer at TONOMUS and CEO of ZeroPoint DC in his closing keynote.
Yet as the pace of AI adoption quickens, so will our demand for data centers. These facilities currently consume 80 GW of electricity — around 2% of the world’s total energy consumption. By 2030, this could skyrocket to 230 GW, said Fontana, making the need for more sustainable data centers a particularly pressing problem.
Fontana proposed four solutions: more energy-efficient chip design, advanced cooling mechanisms, using excess data center heat to warm households, and using renewable energy to power these infrastructures.
With a single Google search consuming 60 watts, and a ChatGPT query using 600 watts, Fontana pointed out that we need to be more mindful of how we consume energy. “A Google search or ChatGPT is not free,” he said.
IMD President David Bach concluded the event by urging alumni to keep asking the hard questions and to not settle for easy answers. “We at IMD are trying to contribute to the important conversations that must take place to surface and mitigate those risks, reduce the number of victims, and ensure this transformation happens in an inclusive and sustainable way.”
