Information in the Age of AI

Introduction: AI’s Impact on Business Information Flows

Artificial General Vehicle

The Atomic Human

Information Theory and AI

• Claude Shannon developed information theory at Bell Labs
• Information measured in bits, separated from context
• Makes information fungible and comparable

Information Transfer Rates

• Humans speaking: ~2,000 bits per minute
• Machines communicating: ~600 billion bits per minute
• Machines share information 300 million times faster than humans

New Flow of Information

Evolved Relationship

Evolved Relationship

The Evolution of Decision Making

Networked Interactions

Bezos memo to Amazon in 2002

The API Mandate

• All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.
• Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.

• There will be no other form of inter-process communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.

• It doesn’t matter what technology they use.
• All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

Duality of Corporation and Information

• What is less written about is corporate structure.
• This information infrastructure is reflected in the corporation.
• Two pizza teams with devolved autonomy.
• Bound together through corporate culture.

Conway’s Law

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.

Conway (n.d.)

Information Topography: How AI Reshapes Organizational Decision Making

An Attention Economy

1. Human attention will always be a “scarce resource” (See Simon, 1971)
2. Humans will never stop being interested in other humans.
3. Organisations will keep trying to “capture” the attention economy.

Balancing Centralized Control with Devolved Authority

Question Mark Emails

Executive Sponsorship

• Direct sponsorship from the most senior executive.
  • This has a cultural effect as well as a direct effect.
• Bring about through involvement
  • develops understanding of capabilities of data science in exec team.

Pathfinder Projects

• In executive context: an important project that is interdepartmental.
• Should involve the CEO, CFO, CIO and data science team (or equivalents).

Generative AI as HAM

• Generative AI provides us with an “analogue human”
• An information amplifier with a multiplier of 300,000,000.
• Radically changes information infrastructure
• From Conway’s Law: All existing models redundant.

Human-Analogue Machines (HAMs) as Business Tools

Human Analogue Machine

HAM

The Business Challenge

What to do?

• We know weverything we’re doing now is wrong.
• We don’t know how it’s wrong.
• “Marconi approach” unlikely to work

Conclusion: The Business Imperative

AI cannot replace atomic human

Atomic Human Approach

• Human attention the differentiator.
• Focus on how your human capital needs to adapt.
• People first approach, not AI first.

Why am I in Kenya?

Data Science Africa is a bottom up initiative for capacity building in data science, machine learning and AI on the African continent

Why did I start Trent?

The Trent Approach

• Work with People who are close to Systems.
• Address real pain points now.
• Hold a view on the long term change (information systems).
• Use the best agentic AI technology (proprietary).

Conclusion

• AI reshapes information flows - understand your information topography
• Balance centralised control and devolved decision-making
• Recognize LLMs as interfaces, not substitutes for human judgment

Conclusion

• Build intelligent accountability into your AI deployments
• Focus on domain expertise leading AI implementation
• Invest in developing institutional character around AI use