August Jackson, senior director of Market and Competitive Intelligence with Deltek, acted as the event moderator for ArchIntel’s Artificial Intelligence in Competitive Intelligence Forum on Thursday, Oct. 22nd.
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“This is a really great time to be a competitive intelligence (CI) professional,” Jackson illustrated following a brief introduction from ArchIntel CEO Jim Garrettson. Before introducing an expert panel full of invaluable insights and experience, Jackson had the chance to give a short keynote.
With his opening remarks, he addressed the undercurrent of fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its value in competitive intelligence. Jackson mentioned that some people are concerned about AI technology displacing a great deal of the work or replacing much of the human workforce sooner rather than later.
However, he stressed that the people who build the majority of AI tools and products aren’t very experienced with competitive intelligence and the AI technology capabilities are often oversold on their value. In fact, Jackson claimed that a lot of these tools have driven the workload and demand more for himself and his CI team.
“It really is up to us as a professional community to set the agenda for how AI will enable competitive intelligence, not replace us,” Jackson explained. “We need to find our collective professional voice for us to speak to the developer community to ensure that AI is an enabling tool for competitive intelligence. This event is one of the first steps we need to find that voice.”
Jackson elaborated that AI and machine learning tools that are truly designed for CI practices will deliver results and real value to eliminate a great deal of the heavy lifting and housekeeping that can all too often muddle the CI process. CI tools make connecting the dots a lot easier.
“The conversation that we’ve started today is for us to state what we do, how we do what we do and what creates real value for ourselves and our customers,” Jackson explained.
He continued to explain that competitive intelligence professionals bring critical value that enable us to develop crucial insight and there are five key areas where humans cannot be replaced by AI technology: ingenuity, ethics, empathy, transparency and awareness of human psychology. Simply put, humans will ask, “What if?” That’s something no AI will ever replace.
“We’re learning the skills that we need to enhance our CI practices with artificial intelligence. These tools will give us the capacity to go broader and deeper into our processes to understand more of the market dynamics that influence competitiveness and success,” Jackson added.
“We will not have useless technology crammed down our throats. We won’t accept the narrative that we are at fault for not being able to take advantage of AI that is thoughtlessly applied to our practice.
This keynote and the panel that will follow is the beginning of a conversation that was as a community need to have.”
That conversation continued in the full expert panel following August Jackson’s opening remarks as he introduced Suki Fuller of Competitive Intelligence Fellows as well as Dr. Fred Hoffman of Mercyhurst University and Arik Johnson of Aurora Worldwide Development as the panelists.
In case you missed ArchIntel’s Artificial Intelligence in Competitive Intelligence Forum on Thursday, you can rewatch the full event by registering on ArchIntel Events. ArchIntel will be announcing new events very soon so don’t miss your chance to stay up to date on the latest in competitive intelligence.
Additionally, ArchIntel recently published its ‘State of Competitive Intelligence Today’ Compendium that has summarized the insights provided by the top-of-mind, leading CI practitioners to the US federal sector from 22 interviews (and counting) as a part of ArchIntel’s ‘Competitive Intelligence Spotlight’ Series.
Click here to download your FREE copy of ArchIntel’s ‘State of Competitive Intelligence Today’ Compendium,