Getting Started on the Pathway to Collaborative Intelligence

My last blog discussed how society is on the threshold of a revolution in knowledge work. This revolution will be brought about by fusing the intelligence of humans and machines—let’s call this interdependence between humans and machines.

Collaborative Intelligence (CI)

This blog explores how to implement collaborative intelligence. It discusses deploying current and evolving AI tools, building employee AI skills and talent, and finally, applying best-practice strategic planning and change management practices to engage faculty, staff, and learners in highly participatory processes and pilot projects to understand the coming CI future.

In a few days, the next blog will move beyond getting started to describe how to deploy and leverage emergent CI capabilities to achieve necessary, transformative outcomes and add value at a time of rapid change.

Earlier blogs described how American higher education has been slow to buy into the transformative prospects of Artificial Intelligence—slower than other higher education enterprises around the world—and even slower to comprehend the true potential of Collaborative Intelligence. 

However, a select group of perceptive leaders of institutions and leaders of of enterprises are finding ways to get started on the pathway to CI. In higher education, some are starting by transforming their existing mindsets and engaging their faculty, staff, and students in processes of discovery to build vision, insight, skills, and commitment to embedding AI/CI into their policies, practices, and processes. Other leaders have established new enterprises with the strategic intent of reinventing higher education for the Age of Collaborative Intelligence, using a blank sheet approach.

Barriers Facing the Deployment of AI/CI

Higher Education Leaders face a daunting set of barriers in deploying current-generation AI and moving on to discover the full potential of CI:

• It seems the current generation of GenAI tools getting press are advanced Chatbots on the road to something much better. They don’t possess the more impressive capabilities that are being promised by the tech companies (Apple predicts four more levels of sophistication beyond Chatbots). So, there are no demonstrable use cases of the capabilities of true collaborative intelligence applications available today. Investor advisors such as Scott Galloway, James Ferguson, Goldman Sachs, and others warn about AI being a bubble, and aspects of it may yet prove to be just that. But many investors can see AI to be the next big thing.

• Institutional executives, faculty, and staff do not possess the process reengineering skills and experience to apply AI/CI in ways that will transform practices and outcomes. We all have much to learn.  
  

• Most faculty are reluctant to embrace AI/CI. They fear change, especially for their jobs, their teaching methods, and the devaluation of their expertise. In fact, robust CI promises to provide ways for faculty, staff, and students to discover how to upskill and change their practices so they will be successful in the Age of Collaborative Intelligence.

• Most current strategic planning and change management processes do not enable institutions to think and plan in the future tense and to lead and navigate concerted campaigns to achieve transformative change. Nor do they show how to create pilot projects and expeditions that can anticipate new CI capabilities and work them into strategies in an expeditionary manner. New, virtualized approaches are needed that will enable continual participation of large numbers of faculty, staff and students in engaging the future using that vision to learn new skills and practices.  

Getting Started on the Pathway to CI – Evolve Existing Practices and Processes 

Institutional leaders must immediately evolve existing practices and processes and prepare for transformational CI that will emerge over the next few years. 

• Begin now. Top leadership must understand the unique transformation potential of Collaborative Intelligence. It then must work hard to establish a sense of urgency throughout the institution by starting a process of community engagement to understand the emergent future and reshape the mindset of faculty and staff. 

• Redirect Strategic Planning and Change Management Processes.  Create an aggressive strategic thinking group focused on the trends and questions emerging from the future and CI. Utilize a 5- to 10-year vision horizon and a 2-year planning horizon. Virtualize planning processes using a combination of Zoom + Miro + AI to create a broader, deeper engagement experience and attain better outcomes! See SI’s SCUP 2023 presentation on virtualization to see a demonstration.

• Redirect strategies to use emerging CI to create action steps to improve learner, faculty, and staff performance and success. Enhanced productivity and efficiency are not enough! Progressively develop AI/CI skills and acquire new talent to manifest change and strengthen internal thought leadership. Prepare for perpetual upskilling and certification of new skills. 

• Launch pilot projects in an expeditionary manner to build talent, skills, and commitment; engage a broad cross-section of faculty, staff, and students; and set the stage for more ambitious CI projects to come. For more details, see Colleen Carmean’s blog, “GenAI and the Student Experience," more details on three sets of opportunities using AI/CI.  

• Deeper Learning Experiences. Providing personalized pathways, facilitating anytime/just-in-time support through interactive platforms and tutoring, thus allowing the student to pursue exploratory learning paths and approaches.

• GenAI-infused, Transformational Teaching. Improve student outcomes using AI-powered curriculum design for better retention, graduation, and performance for better equity and increased student satisfaction; enhance faculty productivity by freeing up faculty time from repetitive tasks; provide best-of-class curriculum, content, and assessment; achieve Institutional cost savings and resource optimization; provide teachers and learners access to summative, self-paced, and individualize knowledge.  

• Pathways to Equity. Help mitigate the achievement gap by providing personalized, self-paced, independent learning experiences that cater to students' independent needs and experiences; providing alternative formats and accessibility tools; and providing a special channel for First Gen students that provides insights and decoding of the often-implicit success factors not apparent to them. 

Getting Started on the Pathway to AI/CI – Start with a Clean Sheet 

A variety of new enterprises are preparing for the future with a different approach. Rather than attempting to transform an existing institution by reinventing its practices, they are using the clean sheet approach to transformation. They are influenced by Clayton Christensen’s undergirding principle that in all sectors, including industries like higher education, market leaders are seldom the ones to introduce truly transformative disruptive innovations. Outsiders are usually the ones to introduce disruptive technologies and practices that transform and create revolutionary outcomes. Bring higher education’s outsiders in! 

Innovative leaders are using AI/CS as a foundation to create a clean sheet for planning, strategy, learning and administrative processes, and talent development. For example, Southern New Hampshire University has spun off an enterprise called Human Systems to create an AI-centric model for higher learning tailored to the need to perpetually upskill and reskill over careers of 60 years or more. Paul LeBlanc and George Siemens will be joining Linda Baer and me at SCUP 2024 in our concurrent session “Harnessing the Disruptive Power of AI” to discuss Human Systems’ vision and approach.