Approaching the Risk, Challenges, and Opportunities in 2025: Peter Waziri
Part 2: Fast Moving Technology Trends
In previous writings, I focused on the healthcare industry within the Americas. This time, I decided to adopt a broader industry outlook from the perspective of three important trends and their respective outlooks within a global context. I will present these trends in a series of three short articles, and they are as follows:
- Implications of dramatic policy changes from an inflation and debt/capital price uncertainty perspective;
- Fast-moving technology trends from the AI perspective; and
- Shifts in global alliances, supply chains and investments.
The Background
In part 1 of this series, we covered the background. Here is a recap, before we dive into the fast moving technology trends from the Ai perspective:
If we start by asking if this current global turbulence is a new phenomenon, my answer would be no because we have witnessed such patterns throughout human history. Things come around in cycles — financial, pandemics, international strife, global/regional alliances, and so on. In this present climate of uncertainty, businesses are expected to navigate complex geopolitical landscapes, adapt to technological advancements, security threats, while maintaining integrity, transparency, and trust. The elevation of uncertainty around geopolitical risks is materially reshaping decades of established treaties and agreements with unavoidable financial, business, and market consequences. Driving these changes are factors such as long-standing opposition to the status quo; new forces demanding significant and material changes; armed conflicts between sizable powers; and evolving trends superseding the current globally accepted norms. Understanding the deeper dynamics of these drivers will allow boards to properly advise management on a) identifying, navigating, quantifying, and managing these risks, and b) when and how to seize the opportunities from these risks. Companies willing to go beyond numbers and headlines and capitalize on opportunities to remain adaptive and competitive will stand a better chance of prevailing in these turbulent times.
Fast Moving Technology Trends
The big tech firms still dominate technology AI investments from a spending perspective. Other sectors remain cautious on large and comprehensive incorporation of AI into business processes for many reasons. These include the fear of moving quickly and causing significant harm to operations; legal and regulatory risks; the inability to accurately quantify the benefits of adoption; and the high chance of little immediate payoff of a full-scale implementation. There are also operational challenges such as scarcity of AI specialists, and dealing with old creaky IT systems, (i.e., “technical debt”) which can make it difficult to plug in LLMs without causing chaos. As such, the concept of artificial “general” intelligence (AGI) remains elusive because such a comprehensive approach has not resulted in significant levels of adoption and benefits.
Despite this, the AI trend is unstoppable, and firms must craft an effective adoption strategy to remain competitive going forward. This is where boards can help stress-test management’s AI strategy towards devising a path that creates the most effective AI adoption methodology. Such a strategy might pivot away from adopting a comprehensive AGI approach to one that targets achieving efficiency from a task, industry, or process perspective. For example, AI is an immediate threat where the potential damage done by AI hallucinations is low. Imagine a firm in the online education sector that helps students with answering homework assignments or a firm performing translation services. In this case, an off-the-shelf AI solution can replicate these services with little customization. Moreover, different sectors can partner with tech firms to develop sector-specific, focused, measurable objectives such as reducing medical diagnostic errors by 50%, or improving high school math proficiency by 25%, or enhancing the efficiency of existing energy grids by 30%.
Opportunities also exist on the tasks level such as helping to identify high achievers in sectors where performing complex tasks requires refined expertise and good judgment (e.g., scientific research or investing money). A study of financial decision-makers showed that high performers obtained 10% higher returns compared to others with gains of 2% because the high performers used AI to obtain better insights from earnings calls. Comparable results occurred with a group of East-African entrepreneurs where the successful ones increased profits by over 15% while others saw profits fall. Again, the high performers used AI to find tailored solutions such as securing new power sources during blackouts while others followed generic advice such as doing more advertising. The takeaway is that AI adoption favors skilled professionals with the judgment, agility, and expertise to navigate complex, information-rich environments, which correlates with past technological adoptions. For example, the Industrial Revolution witnessed substantial wage increases for engineers who mastered the new machinery while routine laborers lost out. Similarly, the computer age rewarded software engineers and rendered typists obsolete.
Stay tuned for part 3 of this series, to be published in two weeks.
Connect with Peter on his LinkedIn, and read more on his Signitt.
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A financial and healthcare leader with a global perspective, Peter Waziri has deep experience across several industries. He currently provides financial leadership for Parkland Community Health Plan’s operational and clinical management functions. Previous positions include CFO at Umpqua Health and also at Cascade Comprehensive Care, along with management positions at GE Capital, Ernst & Young, PNC, KeyCorp, and the Institute of European Finance in Great Britain.
