At a reception following CAFII’s 4 April, 2023 Board meeting, held in-person in Toronto, Kartik Sakthivel, Global Chief Information Officer, LIMRA and LOMA, made a well-received presentation on broad technology trends. He emphasized looking not at what technology can do, but the customer experience and what customers want. He repeatedly emphasized that output from data is worthless if the underlying data are not accurate and correct. He also noted that younger generations have a great facility with technology and there is a need for businesses to recalibrate their approach to these customers, and to realize that they will face social media backlash if they do not perform up to expectations.
Kartik Sakthivel also emphasized that IT and data are not just technology department priorities, they are business-wide priorities. The amount of data available to analyze is massive, and new developments in artificial intelligence have the capacity to disrupt businesses. ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer application in human history, and reached one million users in 5 days, and 100 million active monthly users in January 2023, just two months after its launch. He noted the dangers to this new technology, however, and cited the example of two AI programs that mutually invented a new language that only they could understand. The creators of those programs literally had to unplug them in order to contain the potential threats this development posed.
But returning to a constant theme, Kartik said that a great AI platform with bad data will lead to an awful AI experience. Business leaders need to enhance their skills at what he described as “data literacy.” He identified five steps to data literacy:
- Make data an enterprise priority;
- Communicate from the CEO on down;
- Think global, act local;
- Train and educate employees;
- Engage and empower employees.
The presentation has been posted on the CAFII website and can be found here:
Download Presentation (PDF)
