Expert offers tips on how to lead by example, make sure the 'novelty' of genAI doesn't wear off, and customize tech with people's roles
Generative AI (Gen AI) could add an impressive $180 billion annually to the Canadian economy in labour productivity gains by 2030.
The tech has the potential to boost labour productivity by saving Canadian workers up to 125 hours a year — equivalent to half an hour every working day — resulting in an 8% increase in productivity by 2030.
The problem? Public trust in AI in Canada is 23 percentage points lower than the global average, at 31%.
And only 9% of Canadian companies are using generative AI, says the Microsoft report.
John Lyotier, CEO and co-founder of TravelAI, says Canadian employees may have a sense of “needing permission” to use AI in their everyday jobs, and it’s up to leadership to set a strong example. As a solution, Lyotier began sharing openly and regularly with his team how he is using AI to assist him in his work.
For example, he writes blog posts that he shares with his team, detailing when he has used AI to summarize a report or otherwise improve efficiency in his work.
“For me as a leader, I have to lead from the top. I have to say, ‘Here's how I'm using the tools, and here's what I'm doing to the tools,’ and basically give permission to everybody else,” Lyotier says.
“If I wasn't willing to do that, then they'd feel like they were cheating: ‘You've hired me to do a certain job, and I'm doing the job because I am the writer, I'm an analyst, I am a customer support person. Why do I need the scripts that the machines generated for me?’ We have a chance to be leaders in the space, and hopefully other Canadian leaders take advantage of that.”
Another stumbling block for many organizations attempting to adopt AI tools within their systems is employees abandoning the technology too quickly.
Any new tech is like a toy, Lyotier explains, so after the initial novelty wears off, Canadian employees, who may not feel the urgency to adopt the tools, may abandon it and go back to their previous processes, unless encouraged.
“You have to be willing to fail. There'll be lots of missteps along the way, but the worst thing that we can do is not start,” he says. “Every time you fail, you will learn something, and you will move forward the next little bit.”
The recent expression that “People will not be replaced by AI, they will be replaced by people who know how to use AI” is accurate, Lyotier says, likening genAI to other technologies that have permanently advanced efficiency such as the printing press and digital files and email.
Hesitant employees can be helped to adopt AI tools by customizing them to their roles and even to the individual, Lyotier says, using “agents” to make the interactions with generative AI tools more natural and less intimidating.
“It's a challenge to embrace something new at the best of times, but it's a really, really hard challenge to embrace something new when it's going to take your job,” he says.
“You're supposed to be the expert in the room. And now you have somebody who's way smarter than you potentially … and it almost seems like cheating.”
Lyotier admits that even he cannot keep up with the lightning-fast pace that the technology is advancing. This fast pace is contributing to a knowledge gap where employees in Canada think the tools are still the same as the ones they tried when the first ChatGPT was released in 2022.
“It’s definitely a problem. Even for myself, as somebody who's immersed in all these AI technologies on an every-single-day basis, I can't keep up,” he says.
“II think one of the challenges that we face as a Canadian society is that these tools came out into the market, everybody said, ‘Oh, interesting. That's kind of fun,’ then they went back to their regular lives … it's gone leaps and bounds from where it was then, but people think it's still the same, and if I can't keep up to the rate of change, somebody who's not in AI is getting even further behind.”
Another possible reason for the disparity in AI uptake between Canada and the rest of the world could be a matter of necessity, says Lyotier.
“From a Canada perspective, I think that we're very fortunate in the market in that we are a very advanced, technologically driven society,” he says. “The level of embrace from people who are outside of the country is that this is giving them a leg up that they didn't have before. And I don't think people domestically have felt that way.”
Because Canada is already a technologically advanced country, there is a levelling of the playing field occurring where workers from around the world in less developed countries are “catching up” while Canada is levelling off.
“If you're in these markets around the world that now get to use these tools, you're advancing really, really quickly because you have these tools at your disposal, and we're not,” Lyotier says.
“It's not that we're not advancing, it's just the rate of change hasn't been as pronounced as we see in other parts of the world.”
