How to resolve AdBlock issue? Drova herds the AI on doing business with AI
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
ARTIFICIAL intelligence is here to stay. Businesses have to adjust to it.
As with any new technology, there are challenges and it’s never easy for every business.
Sam Riley, the CEO and founder of Drova, said a lot of businesses are getting some things right about AI.
“They’re experimenting, they’re researching, they’re innovating, they’re trying,” Mr Riley told Talking Business.
“They’re making mistakes but they’re learning so I think most business owners are trying to figure it out, trying to understand it, trying to improve progressively.
“Some, I think, are getting it wrong by spending too much time trying to govern it before they do anything. Some people I speak to, we want to help them but they’ve spent the last year writing their AI policy and they still haven’t finalised it. It’s still being debated and it’s actually not governing anything at all. 
“So I think doing nothing is worse.”
Smaller businesses feel AI pressure
Mr Riley said smaller businesses feel they face challenges with AI
“I think AI by its nature sounds very technical,” he said. “For the non-technical business to use AI, maybe it’s a bit intimidating, a bit confronting.
“Like the economy, managing change and dealing with disruption. It’s like the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Cashflow is like oxygen and water. If that’s tight, it’s very hard for business owners to then spend time on things like AI.”
Mr Riley said a lot of businesses were doing little things like running reports through an AI tool such as Claude.
“More advanced uses of AI – where it’s actually performing functions in the business or it’s automating a workflow or scaling something – not a lot of businesses have deployed that kind of sophistication, even though it’s a couple of steps above summarising a document,” he said.
Mr Riley said AI actually needed a human being to vet it.
“AI can only help and add value or look at the accuracy of anything if it is documented,” he said.
“They say the biggest boom is going to be in consulting and you see the AI companies themselves building this capability on documenting workflows. How does your business run, what happens in each step.
“That business process mapping and capturing the business process, that is a weakness of most businesses well before AI.
“People know how work gets done and it just gets done but you can’t just throw AI on top of that. It needs documented processes to act on.” 
Use AI to deal with AI risks
Mr Riley said AI could actually be used by businesses to deal with risks created by AI.
“The risks in business haven’t really changed,” he said.
“You’ve got erosion to margin, you’ve got fraud risk, you’ve got competitive risk.
“It’s the same risk. But the difference today is AI is the number one driver of those risks. It’s actually widening the scope and accelerating it,” Mr Riley said.
“The reason you need to use AI is to analyse which risks are threatening our business objectives and how much.
“When you look at your whole business function and driver of risk, it is too much for the human brain to comprehend and calculate.
“AI can really take that intent and understand your industry, where are you based, what are your business objectives,” he said.
“Then let’s look across the whole landscape of AI drivers of risk and see which ones actually threaten your business objectives the most, why, and also what you can do about it.” 
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
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