In September, the Mayo Clinic in Arizona created a unique position in the hospital system: chief artificial intelligence officer.
Doctors at the Arizona site, which has facilities in Phoenix and Scottsdale, had been experimenting with AI for years. But after the release of ChatGPT in 2022 and the resulting enthusiasm for the technology, the hospital decided to work more with AI and find someone to coordinate the effort.
That’s why executives appointed Dr. Bhavik Patel, a radiologist specializing in AI, for the new position. Dr. Patel has since been testing a new AI model that could speed up the diagnosis of a rare heart disease by looking for hidden data in ultrasound scans.
“We’re really trying to drive some of these data and AI capabilities across every department, every division, every workgroup,” said Dr. Richard Gray, the CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. The role of Chief AI Officer was created because “it is helpful to have a coordinating function with deep expertise.”
Many people have long feared that AI would destroy jobs. But a boom in technology has instead led law firms, hospitals, insurance companies, government agencies and universities to create today’s hottest new role in companies in America and beyond: the executive responsible for AI
Credit bureau Equifax, manufacturer Ashley Furniture and law firms such as Eversheds Sutherland have appointed AI leaders in the past year. In December, The New York Times named an editorial director for AI initiatives. And more than 400 federal departments and agencies were looking for senior AI officials last year to comply with an executive order from President Biden that provided protections for the technology.
In total, 122 people with the title of “chief or vice president of AI” joined a forum on Glassdoor, the company review site, last year, up from 19 in 2022, according to Glassdoor.
“AI leadership roles are emerging because companies want to leverage transformative technology,” said Randy Bean, founder of consulting firm NewVantage Partners, which advises companies on data and AI leadership. At the same time, he added, “Organizations want to say, ‘Yes, we have a chief AI officer,’ because it makes them look good.”
Additional leadership positions were created in response to major technological and financial changes. In the 1980s, advances in computing power led to a boom in chief information officers and chief technology officers, who typically oversee a company’s use of technology or develop it. After the 2008 financial crisis, chief data officers were appointed to comply with new regulations and manage the way companies use data.
For AI leadership roles, companies and organizations are looking for someone who can help them understand the risks and potential of the technology and how it could change the way people work.
To that end, health insurer Florida Blue promoted Svetlana Bender to its new vice president of AI and behavioral sciences in May. One of their first AI projects was to control an internal chatbot that can help write computer code and analyze customer data.
Dr. Bender, who was previously director of technology solutions at Florida Blue, said her team will train the chatbot using customer data and make it available to all employees for use. This month she hired an AI director to assist her with the work
“We want to leverage the technology as quickly as possible” while ensuring customers’ insurance information remains secure, she said.
Accenture, a consulting firm, hired a chief AI officer in September as clients became increasingly interested in the technology. The company promoted Lan Guan, who worked on global data and AI, to the role of advising clients on integrating AI into their businesses. Accenture also develops AI tools, including for the insurance industry.
The new position “underlines our ambitions in the market and how optimistic we are about what we believe to be great potential for our customers in AI,” Ms. Guan said.
At Western University in Ontario, Mark Daley, a computer science professor and chief information officer, took on the new position of chief AI officer in October. While he is still teaching, he has given up the role of Chief Information Officer.
Since then, Dr. Daley focused on establishing over 30 AI pilot projects, including working with the research and finance team to automate assessment processes and collaborating with humanities departments to develop new courses.
“We are at a moment where the best approach to generative AI is actually exploration and experimentation,” he said.
Some experts said technology is changing so quickly that it could soon surpass reels. A Harvard Business Review article last year, co-authored by NewVantage’s Mr. Bean, posited that chief AI and data executives were doomed because the jobs were “a high-pressure, high-technology balancing act , which harbors enormous risks and opportunities”. ”
Karin Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn, said AI will also evolve from a novel technology to something that is an integral part of everyone’s work. “AI will appear in many roles and will be so ingrained that the specific AI job title will disappear,” she said.
Some senior AI officers said their job has staying power. Dr. Patel, of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, said a big part of his new job is communicating with other doctors and regulators like the Food and Drug Administration and figuring out how AI can make medical work more efficient.
“Modern healthcare still has many gaps,” he said. “Here I think we can intelligently use artificial intelligence to close this gap or at least reduce it.”
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2024-01-29 10:00:23
www.nytimes.com
