Everywhere you look trust networks are collapsing.
The recent partial shutdown of the US government called into question whether travelers could gain timely access to flights (ridiculously long lines at TSA checkpoints) on commercial airliners of less than five-nines mechanical safety (doors/windows which blow open) filled with semi-unhinged, prone to air rage passengers directed on take-offs, landings, and taxiways by appropriately trained, staffed, and rested air traffic controllers.
So, in what was a mobility-guaranteed global society, getting “there” is now laden with trust issues. When you get to your luxury cruise ship destination or world-famous art museum there is now the question of whether you will be exposed to some esoteric, high-mortality rodent virus or terrorist attack. So even when you get there, “there” has trust problems as well.
Moving beyond the trust issues facing those who still possess the financial wherewithal to engage in travel, a generation of young workers are losing trust in whether our educational and economic systems can provide a path to an anxiety-free future.
On the healthcare side, individuals wonder whether they can trust their health insurer to cover the treatments they might require. “Cost of Denial” is an ongoing NBC News investigative series focused on the consequences of health insurance coverage controversies. Patients in rural America wonder whether there will be doctors and hospitals to provide any kind of medical assistance.
Trust is kaput in many arenas. And a not insignificant percentage of the population wake up every morning wondering, “Is today the day when it all falls apart?”
I prophecy that trust will become the most important word in the IT lexicon and the economy. AI has thrown the world off its hinges. Many believe we don’t know what the risks are and are uncertain who we can trust to mediate them.
The 50 CIOs, thought leaders, and academics I spoke to agree that artificial intelligence has added a whole new bucket of trust issues. Brian Lurie, an award-winning CIO formerly at Stryker and currently IT advisor to some of the finest privately held businesses in the world, is concerned about “the cyber threat caused by AI agents’ access to information and the agents sharing that data beyond the usual profile protections. It is a new way out for data.”
In Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI, Carissa Véliz reminds us: “Artificial intelligence might seem awe-inspiring and mysterious to the average person. … But that’s how the Oracle of Delphi seemed to ancient Greeks, and astrology to medieval Europeans.”
Adding perspective to a trust-deficient high-risk world
For multiple millennia, humans met with few surprises as they slogged through their day. I am getting the sense that our coping mechanisms have not evolved to the point that they can deal effectively with the perpetual and substantial systemic change we are currently experiencing.
My former boss, noted futurist Alvin Toffler, created the term “Future Shock” to describe the inability to process the implications of what comes next. I believe that many communities are currently experiencing “Present Shock” — an inability to process the world we live in today.
CIO as hero
Futurists forecast more volatility in the years ahead, thereby straining our ability to define what may happen in the future. IT and the CIO can serve as much needed antidotes to a world awash in uncertainty. We can become a trusted oasis for gaining context and taking action. Once again, as we did during the pandemic, IT and the CIO have the opportunity to lead stakeholders out of a miasma of doubt and despair.
CIOs are uniquely situated to succeed in this highly uncertain environment. CIOs understand both theory and practice. Fischer Black, a pioneering theoretician of modern finance who moved from MIT to Wall Street, said, “Markets look a lot less efficient from the banks of the Hudson than from the banks of the Charles.” For over 50 years, CIOs have been transforming hypothetical capabilities of emerging technologies into bottom-line benefits.
Many C-level executives are not comfortable acting in less than certain circumstances. CIOs are all too familiar with the consequences of decision-making under uncertainty. Steven Narvaez, former IT director at the City of Deltona, Fla., only half-jokingly reminded me of the historical pattern of “choose wrong and the new guy fixes it.” Great CIOs are willing to move forward.
CIOs recognize that nobody builds alone and that well-informed stakeholders improve IT results. As we move forward, the term CIO needs to become a metonymy for hope and courage.
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Source: News