What Does Measuring Progress Look Like in the Age of AI?

By John Hagel

There’s something missing in the growing movement to promote human-centered AI. We all talk about general concepts like helping people to achieve more of their potential, but is that enough?

If we want to create a movement that is successful in driving change, we need to focus on action and impact, not just conversation and writing. A key question then becomes how to measure and track impact. So far, there’s been very little discussion about this.

Of course, measuring impact in the deployment of human-centered AI is complicated. There are many different levels of potential impact. In addition to the impact at the level of the individual, we could be exploring impact at the level of institutions and society.

To launch this effort, we have developed a survey that is targeted for individuals and their work. I would encourage all of you to fill out the survey and to provide feedback regarding questions that might measure impact more effectively.

This survey starts with some questions to determine how much experience the person has had with AI – how long have they been using it and how frequently are they using it?

We then focus on the emotions that are generated when using AI – is the use of AI generating fear and/or excitement? We focus on emotions because we believe that emotions are a powerful force in shaping our choices and actions as individuals.

The survey then probes into the impact that the use of AI is having in shaping our personal relationships. Are we developing more relationships? Are we developing relationships with a more diverse group of people? Are our relationships with others becoming deeper?

The survey also explores whether AI is helping us to pursue work that is more meaningful to us and more aligned with our values. It seeks to determine whether AI is helping us to increase the value we deliver from our work and to accelerate the delivery of that value.

There are also a series of questions regarding AI’s potential role in cultivating capabilities like curiosity, imagination, creativity, reflection and playfulness. We focus more on capabilities than skills because capabilities can be valuable in all contexts while skills tend to be valuable only in very specific contexts like how to use this kind of machine or perform this kind of calculation.

This is just the beginning. Our hope is that the survey will give us more insight into the impact that AI is currently having at the level of individuals and where the most significant gaps are in terms of helping us as individuals to achieve more of our potential. As we develop specific initiatives seeking to increase the impact of human-centered AI, surveys of this kind will help us to see where impact is increasing and where there will be a need to increase impact even further.

By focusing on measuring impact, we can learn a lot faster about how to achieve even more impact. Movements without metrics tend to get consumed by conversations and a growing array of random actions. We believe there is enormous untapped potential in AI but unleashing that potential will require focus on metrics and excitement about finding ways to increase the impact of human-centered AI.

If you are interested in contributing to this effort, please sign up for our Metrics working group that will be meeting on Zoom tomorrow, January 14. You can sign up HERE.