Valuing Human Creativity over Computer Efficiency

One of the primary points emerging from the recent Newsweek AI Impact Summit was that AI adoption strategies should focus on the value that could be delivered, more than the efficiency that could be realized by process or work automation. This is also a primary mantra of mine when advising companies on their AI strategies, for a couple of reasons:

• Efficiency is always hard to quantify, as the reference points are invariably difficult to determine and therefore the goal ends up being some form of "aspirational time savings," without a well-defined basis.
• Value creation is more motivating as it reinforces the value of human creativity, whereas efficiency tends to demotivate and dehumanize by characterizing work in simple machine terms.