Article co-authored by Dr. Emma Soane, Associate Professor of Management in the Department of Management at the LSE and a member of the British Psychological Society, and Dr. S. S. Rebecca Newton, Visiting Principal Investigator in the Department of Management at the LSE and CEO of CoachAdviser.
Integrating synthetic intelligence into business operations is temporarily becoming an imperative for many organizations. Leaders will need to be intentional when defining and building their AI culture.
A wide diversity of techniques for organizational AI culture is emerging. Organizations that make full use of AI take a holistic perspective and look for opportunities to implement AI. Future-oriented leaders are strategic and planned in building processes to define, iterate, and tame the right point of AI engagement.
Our studies and experiences show 4 types of AI culture. These cultures are differentiated by the role of AI within the organization and its integration with other facets of the corporate culture.
Organizations with an AI-first culture have defined AI values, AI-specific behaviors and ways of working, and demonstrate an openness or adaptability to the role of AI in their company’s current and future business.
Organizations that develop an AI-first culture are best positioned to achieve and sustain AI transformation.
To build an AI-first culture, an organization’s approach to AI needs to be curious, comprehensive and aligned with the company’s business goals and objectives. An AI-first culture places an emphasis on innovation and adaptability in approach to AI adoption. Employees are empowered to be experimental with AI applications and are provided with educational opportunities to teach, learn about, and apply AI. AI-first companies also take a leadership position in developing frameworks for AI ethics and responsible use of AI.
We often see AI-first cultures in organizations where AI is central to their purpose. Leaders in such companies are strong advocates of the transformational potential of AI and seek opportunities to embed AI throughout their organizations. AI-first cultures are often observed in companies at the forefront of AI technological advancements in their industry.
Isomorphic Labs is an example of an organization with an AI-focused culture. Isomorphic Labs is a virtual biology company seeking to redefine drug discovery with the power and speed of AI. The company was founded and is run by 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner and artificial intelligence pioneer Sir Demis Hassabis, who also co-founded and runs Google DeepMind.
IsoLabs’ ambition is to advance a new era of medical breakthroughs and design drugs to treat or cure humanity’s devastating diseases. Beverley Mallon, Chief People Officer, believes they’ll achieve this through the power of an AI-first approach underpinned by interdisciplinary experts who are intensely curious to embrace the opportunities and breakthroughs that AI has the potential to drive. She says that “only by being brave enough to explore new approaches and to challenge the way things have always been done will we see the kind of positive impact on human health that AI can offer”.
One of the foundations of Iso’s brave exploration is how it builds its technology: incredibly complex at their core, the models Iso uses every day to advance his paintings were evolved through his AI/ML team to prioritize usability in general. the various disciplines and experience of the company. Iso’s medicinal chemists, computational chemists, and biologists can all be involved in solving the same problem, leveraging their diversity of experience to approach it from many different angles.
Iso believes that embedding its culture of collaborative problem solving within its AI models will rapidly accelerate its work with its pharmaceutical partners, its internal drug pipeline, and its team’s ability to solve the fundamental questions that can change the way we design drugs.
“An AI-first culture means prioritizing AI as a key part of corporate strategy, innovation, and organizational processes,” says Sarah Korman, Isomorphic Lab’s General Counsel and Head of Business Operations. “In this culture, AI is not viewed as a strategic business tool – rather, it’s at the heart of how the organization operates”.
Then there are organizations that have an AI-driven culture, where AI programs are embedded in assumptions, values, and behaviors, but AI is not central to their number one goal or business strategy. These organizations operate in a wide variety of sectors.
For example, take an engineering firm client, where innovation is a core value. Their AI-enabled culture aligns with this in many ways, such as by being a mechanism for data to be gathered quickly to feed into new ideas. The teams are encouraged to use AI-generated data as a springboard for their innovation processes. The AI-culture supports and reinforces one of the firm’s core values.
Conversely, an AI-resistant culture reflects the assumption that AI is challenging, poses wonderful risks, or can be negative for the organization. Employees in such organizations would likely have values and behaviors that actively discourage the use of AI. This can also simply be due to organizational resistance to replacing or significant barriers to upgrading infrastructure. There could also be serious concerns about the effect of AI or a lack of insight into how additive AI might be.
AI-agnostic cultures are altogether different. They are characterised by leaders who are unconvinced by the benefits of AI.
Our recent observations are that, while most organizations are discussing AI at some level, many AI-agnostic organizations haven’t yet explored what their AI culture should be because their leaders are not committed to any AI specific applications, unclear about how they may meaningfully shape or contribute to their strategy, and are unsure about their value.
Understanding how your company currently engages with AI can be a beneficial starting point in defining and cultivating an effective AI culture. There is a distinction between organizations where groups of people have particular views on AI and having an AI-culture that embeds ideas about AI in values and behaviors. By not taking a directional position on AI, leaders create an environment that allows misalignment to become pervasive. There may be disagreement about which AI culture to develop. The result could be an uncoordinated approach that creates patchy systems with unclear outcomes for employees and stakeholders.
For example, one of our clients discovered that their culture had become indifferent when AI activities in certain departments affected collaboration, one of the company’s core values. Some employees have installed AI equipment instead of seeking advice from colleagues across the company, finding it effective and saving time. Seeing an easing of engagement among teams, leaders became concerned about the collaborative culture the company had fostered for so long. They needed to achieve some cultural clarity around AI, offering guidance on how to use it while encouraging ongoing debate between departments. AI has become a starting point for richer conversations between companies that strengthened collaboration.
Effective leadership now requires leaders to be intentional about the AI culture they need and aligned with the organization’s core values.
An AI-culture must be developed through the lens of various other aspects of the organization’s culture. Leaders need to identify the AI culture they want their organization to have, the current AI culture, and create a plan to bridge the gap.
Creating an AI-culture involves questioning underlying assumptions – for example, asking what do we currently assume about AI in our organization? Are these assumptions shared? How can AI be applied to achieve business objectives while upholding our values?
Building an effective AI culture is rarely the sole responsibility of an organization’s leadership team. As with any other successful cultural initiative, all workers can (and are empowered to) contribute to their organization’s AI culture. It is vital to note that technical proficiency in AI is not a mandatory requirement to particularly influence AI culture: an expansion mindset and an ability to adapt to replace will create an enabling environment for AI programs to flourish.
Developing an AI-culture requires alignment around a core idea of how AI supports the organization to achieve its goals and alignment of that idea with assumptions, values, behaviors and ways of working. This requires patience, iteration, and openness to an evolving organizational culture. Those organizations that fail to be intentional about their AI-culture may soon find themselves left behind. A sustainable and effective AI-culture is a critical asset in utilizing the transformative potential of AI and navigating our increasingly AI-engaged world.
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