- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 10/Jul 07:16

What keeps a CEO up at night?

DIGITAL security, data privacy and the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) usage on human creativity aren’t just buzzwords – they are real-world issues that jolt CEO's out of bed in the dead of night. At the American Chamber of Industry and Commerce (Amcham TT) Tech Hub Islands Summit at the Hilton Trinidad, Port of Spain, on July 2, top executives pulled back the curtain on the high-stakes concerns shaping today's boardroom decisions. During the panel, What's Keeping Executives Up at Nights, industry leaders – Houston Ross, group chief information and digital transformation officer, Republic Bank Ltd; Gerardo Rivera Menjivar, general manager, Digicel Business; Roslan Schofield, non-operated ventures general manager, Shell; James McLetchie, executive VP and deputy group CEO, Massy; and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) country representative Julian Belgrave tackled these digital dilemmas. The panel discussion was moderated by Amcham TT president Anna Henderson. Ross, addressing summit participants before the panel, said he had observed that many Caribbean business people were too polite. "You will nod yes to the use of technology, but you won’t implement it. Your businesses are still run on e-mail and spreadsheets, instead of using the available technology. You celebrate activity, but no results," Ross said. He said the Caribbean was facing a silent attrition and bleeding its future, as the people with talent were moving away, as they don’t have the ecosystem to thrive. Ross added that there are no systems built to take advantage of AI and large language models to build systems and processing power to create better value. "Execution is no longer about headcount, but accountability and clarity. Technology doesn’t break, but people and processes do, so we must stop confusing being busy with being valuable." During the panel, Menjivar said what kept him up at night was the idea of even a second of real downtime or an overlooked vulnerability which could undo years of work for Digicel’s customers. "Building this resilience, this infrastructure, to provide customers with this resilience is what really keeps me up at night. It’s about how to enable business continuity and keep doing it in this hyper-connected world that’s going so fast. It’s about keeping pace." Schofield said while AI would provide solutions and opportunities, he was more worried about the unknowns that still existed with the technology. "Emerging research indicates the use of AI and AI tools could potentially impact our critical-thinking skills, it could impact our reasoning and problem-solving. "A lot of the generative AI tools and natural learning models help to simplify very complex problems and concepts, making them very simple and summarised outputs and so over time, as we go through and evolve with the tools, does it get to a space where we’re no longer able to understand these concepts? "That concerns me, because I have teenagers and they grew up in a very digital world, social media and now AI, and I wonder how it will affect them." He said he was also concerned about information bias and the data used to train the AI models. "The tool assumes the bias of the information it’s trained on, it assumes the personality of the trainer, so those biases can inform the interactions and conversations you have with the tool. So sometimes it’s because we’re asking for these personalised responses, it can confirm biases and that can be an element of concern." Belgrave said his concern was with the exponential rate with which the technology was changing, which made it challenging to determine which tools to deploy and adapt. "If you had asked me that a year ago, it would have been a bit more nerve-wracking in terms of fear, but in the process of learning how to use AI, I’m also seeing opportunities. So, what keeps me up is that uncertainty and the opportunities that lie ahead with the tools and technologies that are there, but there’s also the fear factor." McLetchie said Caribbean people are talented and creative, but if the region doesn't act swiftly on the opportunities presented by technology, the gap between the region and the rest of the world is going to get even bigger. [caption id="attachment_1165589" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Panellists Gerardo Rivera Menjivar, general manager, Digicel Business, left; Roslan Schofield, non-operated ventures general manager, Shell; Julian Belgrave, country representative, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Houston Ross, group chief information and digital transformation officer, Republic Bank Ltd; and moderator Anna Henderson, president Amcham TT; at Amcham TT's THIS summit on July 1 at Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain. - Photo by Faith Ayoung[/caption] "We need to put ourselves in a position to compete in the labour market. I think we need to look at the behaviour of the larger organisations, we need to collaborate, come together and do something that benefits us all, not fight each other." Future-proofing and leveraging technology for SMEs Asked about future-proofing and leveraging technology for small-and medium-enterprises (SMEs), Ross said he believed in investing in people and building talent in-house. He said there was a Python computer language training programme for 500 technical and non-technical staff which had been taken by over 130 staff so far, split between both categories. "We are building a talent pool of people who are not afraid of technology. We talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning, we know Python is the foundation we can build on." Belgrave said he had become more intentional about managing, attracting and retaining talent in personnel. He said being more intentional about engendering collaboration and a more collaborative environment is crucial. Schofield said Shell was moving towards digital and energy transition. He said the company was reducing the bar for engineers, economists and analysts to participate in the space and drive efficiency by doing hackathons and Shark Tank competitions where people can pitch ideas. He said the company had created a digital twin space where it had replicated the physical environment around its projects, which assisted in predicting conditions and doing HSE work, drove AI-based maintenance and calculating emerging risk. Menjivar said change management was important. He said Digicel was working on a strategy to bring people in to create change, which had to come from within. "Apart from training, you also have to facilitate the tools and be part of the participation. We have to become a backbone of resilience for the region, moving from being a telecommunications provider to becoming a service provider, which is a challenge, to enable people to run their own businesses." McLetchie said the region’s biggest mistake was not being ambitious enough. He said while resources, planning and funding were needed, the region needed to ask why it couldn’t do better instead of doubting itself. Building digital fluency The panellists were asked how they were building digital fluency and regulating technology use in their companies. Ross said at Republic Bank, they recruited experts and embedded them into their teams, trained people up to management with general knowledge in technology, established and built an innovation centre, and invested in digital training and ecosystem, reinforcing the message that a different way forward had to be planned together. Belgrave said the IDB encouraged countries and institutions to embed levels of institutional capacity and encouraged the capability needed to develop it. He said organisations were encouraged to start initiatives, explore technology uses, experiment to share the results and work on reinforcement and a sustainability perspective. Schofield said technology investment was a board-level conversation. He said there was a human firewall element where information was concerned, where data was being democratised and the wall was being reduced for staff to contribute. He said this required the company to be adaptable and agile in its regulations and policies. "Years ago, we started using Google Translate, but then we said we couldn’t use it because we were putting private data in a public forum. Now the same thing came out with ChatGPT, where we’ve had to provide some clarity for employees on which tools can be used and what information can be put in there. "We’re able to build our own chatbots, so we’ve used that. We’ve done training in sensitive data privacy, we’re trying to protect our data from going outside to prevent copyright issues and copying. One issue in the future will be at what point do we stop collaborating and become our own insular entity?" Menjivar says data security was a priority at Digicel. He said a data breach costs US$2.5 million per cyber-attack. He said security started with the user and was implemented throughout the company. Menjivar said the company was also investing in digital infrastructure throughout the Caribbean so people would be able to build their own apps and develop businesses. Ross said Republic Bank invested in building a cybersecurity team as well as training people in the organisation about the issue, while building and designing systems into the way the bank worked. McLetchie said the Caribbean region can focus on applying for funding to advance its creativity and building niches in order to compete with bigger markets.   The post What keeps a CEO up at night? appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.