Trust is the glue that binds us, both in personal relationships and business transactions. In human interactions, trust fosters connection, cooperation, and mutual respect, forming the foundation for meaningful relationships. Similarly, in business, trust is essential for building rapport with customers, partners, and employees.

With the wave of disruption brought on by advanced AI technologies, the business world is quickly learning the importance of trustworthy AI. Every technology has a dual use. If we are to truly benefit from the many advantages that AI promises to deliver, we must have confidence in the tools we use and the data that feeds it.

"Trust and governance are critical in our AI-driven solutions as an enterprise," said Shannon Bell, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at OpenText. "As we get comfortable with AI usage at scale, our data needs to be meticulously governed to ensure the right permissions are established. Embracing an AI-first mindset means that our governance frameworks will need to evolve to encompass new protocols and standards to interact with LLMs so we can all confidently leverage AI to drive sound decisions and innovation.”

In every field across business, there are experiments going on with generative AI to drive productivity. As we embark upon the next wave, the garden of LLM models will be endless and domain specific. This means that the efficacy of the results depend on whether we can trust our own data to enable autonomous decisions. The debate is no longer about ethical AI; but for most enterprises, it will be a conversation around the right information governance to balance risks, rewards, and new ways of working.

Make your data trustworthy

Information management is the systematic process of collecting, organizing, storing, and distributing knowledge within an organization. It encompasses strategies, technologies, and policies to ensure data is accessible, secure, and used effectively to support decision-making and business processes.

Information management by definition is a prerequisite for AI. And knowledge management has found a new life with the democratization of AI. Automation of information flows in real time can help create complete, accurate, and secure data sets that feed AI. And prompt-based chat assistant interfaces will transform how knowledge is sought and retrieved across organizations of all sizes.   

Consider these three simple steps for enabling trustworthy AI:

• Cloud data strategy – form the foundation of what is needed to support AI across your organization; determine the landscape of applications, data repositories, and cloud infrastructure to host your AI (built and bought).

• Information governance – organize data and information flows in a way that is conducive to iterative learning. The information we feed AI must be current, accurate, secure, complete, and compliant. Determine the right permissions and access to source information both to validate the results but also to ensure the right privacy standards are in place.

• Autonomous decisions – determine how much work you’d like the machines to do. It will be up to business owners to draw the line and apply human logic to determining  what decisions should be made by AI and what shouldn’t be made autonomously.  Determining these parameters will be key to building trust in AI.     

AI reflects reality

Trustworthy data is essential to AI success, but the AI journey doesn’t end there.

“AI is reflective of society,” says Karen Palmer, Storyteller from the Future, Award-winning XR Artist, and TED Speaker, in a recent talk. “So it’s very important for our society to reflect the best part of ourselves, because the AI is going to do that.”

The same, of course, is true for business--AI will generate and amplify a reflection of the organizational information it’s fed; in essence you are what AI says you are. Therefore, organizations must also consider what happens when AI leverages that trustworthy data--what is the image of your organization AI will portray to the world? Does your organization’s information reflect your values, your culture, your priorities?  

AI will be a force multiplier for human potential. We’re starting today by automating workflows and gaining insights, but there’s much more to do. The AI revolution is a mindset and new way to think. With trust and data, people can raise creativity and efficiency. And lastly, by letting the machines do the work, error-proof processing becomes a tangible goal for the future. 

From calculations to decision support to decision automation, artificial general intelligence will empower all of us to be smarter, be more creative, and live longer. 

Learn more about why OpenText is your trusted partner for AI.

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