With the advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), multi-cloud, and data analytics, businesses must have a strategy to move with the times.

So said global speaker and futurist Craig Wing, who spoke to ITWeb TV ahead of his keynote presentation at the ITWeb GRC 2024 event on 20 February.

According to Wing, in the age of GenAI, organisations must be agile but also tread carefully, so insights from a futurist are valuable.

But a futurist is not someone who predicts the future, he said.

“A prime example of where it goes wrong by saying ‘this is what the future is going to be’ is Facebook. So last year, as you know, Facebook went and changed their name to Meta and they sank literally one-third of their market cap into exploring the metaverse.”

Wing advocates a more measured approach. “In my view, a futurist is someone who says ‘how do we ensure that your future is more robust? How do we get you to think through multiple permutations of what the future may be? How do we consider that future? And how do we ensure that we make the best possible decisions so that your strategy, your company, your organisation is robust enough to meet multiple futures?”

He believes it's more about simulating different scenarios to prepare for any potential outcome.

When GenAI is added to the mix, things become very interesting, said Wing.

“...there is no precedence, there's no playbook. The question then becomes ‘how do you do GRC in a future world in which there is no precedence?”

Wing believes as key sectors like education and health continue to adopt AI, people will have an even more important role to play going forward.

Craig Wing

He added that it is concerning to hear consultants and experts using phrases like ‘we have to get rid of the human being, because by implication they are friction points’ and ‘we need to move towards elasticity on demand’.

“They don’t consider the unintended consequences… we have seen before Covid-19 and specifically during Covid-19, what happened when there was no human interaction, there were mental health issues.... depression, suicide, productivity drops etc. I believe the counter to this is the augmentation of humans with technology – not from a chip point of view – it's how [to] augment human’s ability with technology to become better human beings.”

Click here to watch the video.