Abstract: The article explores the possibility of using artificial Intelligence in business activities, including the limits of the useful use of artificial intelligence in the context of the inability to recognize and understand their environment. The article also examines the impact of any limitation framework on the development of variability in the approach to task implementation.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, the influence of contextual factors, the context of interaction with consumers, data analysis, the category of knowledge, the space of activity.
Any activity does not happen by itself, but within a specific market space in which such activity "happens". If within this space there are conditions in which this or that action can be potentially performed, then there is a probability that it will be performed. If the conditions existing in this space do not allow such an action to occur, then it is more likely that it will not happen.
For example, you will not be able to ride a sledge on water or float on it in the air because the conditions of the physical universe will not allow you to do it. Such limiting conditions exist in every area of the entrepreneur's activity, whether the entrepreneur is aware of them or not. In order to make an activity in any area possible, there must be some degree of coherence between that activity and the environment. For example, one cannot build a foundation for a house in the air; such an activity is incompatible with that type of environment.
Thus, the most important task of data analysis is to understand some boundaries of the environment in which certain phenomena can exist [1]. And then, when these boundaries are known, it becomes possible to structure the available data within these boundaries, to establish their interrelationships and to build a coherent system of knowledge.
And this very moment is the basis of the phenomenon that we call industrial revolutions, simply some knowledge systems begin to be so superior to other knowledge systems that an explosive growth of efficiency and labor productivity begins.
The evolution of knowledge, itself, is characterized by the gradual introduction of more and more constraints. This is a matter of principle. In many technologies, since long ago, it has been given a huge amount of knowledge, the more strictly it is regulated by various restrictions and prohibitions.
A similar process occurs in sports, especially in team divisions. In sports disciplines such as soccer, there are strict rules that limit the arbitrary actions of athletes. But this is what contributes to the increased opportunities for improvisation within the given framework. Soccer, due to the large number of players and strict rules, such as the prohibition of playing with hands, stands out for its informativeness, complexity and unpredictability, surpassing other sports in this aspect.
When analyzing the activities of successful people or companies, we often run the risk of seeing something quite different from what actually caused their success. More often than not, we overlook the constraints (rules) that their participants agreed to, and "see" only their goals and available opportunities.
Take, for example, five famous facts about Michael Jordan's life: 1) practiced for many hours every day; 2) played for the Chicago Bulls; 3) wore Nike sneakers; 4) was characterized by his boldness; 5) wore longer shorts than the other players.
Someone who doesn't like to go into too much detail might say, "If I practice for hours every day, play for Chicago, shave my head, wear Nike sneakers and long shorts, I'll play like Michael Jordan!" But what if the real reason for success is behind the scenes? How do we discern it, much less measure it?
In Michael's case, we also have a lot of unknowns. In particular: what role did coach Phil Jackson play in his success? How did the basketball player plan his day? How did he choose the criteria for evaluating the game? What contribution to his success did his immediate environment make? What character traits helped him in the process of work? etc.
Again, someone might say, "Let's do like Michael Jordan and we'll be successful players!" Let's assume that all of the above factors did contribute significantly to the success of the American basketball player. But the mere fact that these things are obvious does not make them the main reason for Michael's achievements. Surely there is much more to his life, training and games that remains hidden from the public eye. All of this together (both what we see and what remains behind the scenes) is the context that made Michael Jordan Michael Jordan.
In that context, there was some set of key resources available to him and some unknown system of constraints on the use of those resources (rules) that Michael was able to turn into opportunities and thus achieve success.
Thus we can state that the outcome of any entrepreneurial activity depends on three main factors:
1) the goals and intentions of the entrepreneur,
2) the resources available to him,
3) the rules for using these resources, including the limits of their use (a system of constraints).
This point of view leads us to a certain paradigm shift: we stop looking at entrepreneurship as a mechanical activity and start looking at it from a systemic point of view [2].
Entrepreneurship as a system Any system consists of elements that interact with each other, thanks to which something whole is formed, which is different from the simple sum of its individual elements. It was Aristotle who said: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Take, for example, an automobile. It consists of a chassis, engine, wheels, fuel tank, steering wheel, gearbox, etc. But all these parts put together create a new quality to the car that the elements of the system do not have individually. It is this new quality of the system that makes the car a valuable product to the customer. The customer is not interested in the individual parts of the car by themselves (steering wheel, wheel or headlight), he is interested in the ability of the car (as a system) to drive safely and comfortably on the roads. In other words, it is the coordinated joint activity of the system elements that leads to the creation of a fundamentally new level of quality (and, accordingly, value) for the entire system (car), which for the customer is significantly greater than the sum of all the components of this system.
And the first question that arises in this systemic approach to the entrepreneur will be this: "Where is the boundary of this business system?". That which has no boundary has no structure. And what has no structure has no function. Any function without structure is an unattainable absolute in any activity, it is not found in real life.
Artificial Intelligence
The very appearance of artificial Intelligence has raised the question of its correlation with natural Intellect. It will lead to a new meaning of Intelligence such as "the ability of a system to correctly interpret external data, learn from that data, and use that knowledge to achieve specific goals and objectives through flexible adaptation" [3].
Considering the structure of artificial Intelligence in terms of the boundaries of its use, as a first thesis we can make the statement that the "boundaries of usefulness" of artificial Intelligence are determined by the boundaries of the natural Intelligence of the entrepreneur. Let us present this in a simplified example. Take, for example, a very smart map in a phone that can plot a route to our desired destination. But, for whatever reason, the phone is unable to accurately determine the current position of our traveler. What happens in this case? Most likely, nothing good will happen, because the system does not know where the person is at the moment and from where to build a route. A similar situation in entrepreneurship is that the entrepreneur himself does not know exactly "where he is" when it comes to his market space and his environment [2].
This reasoning will lead us to the fact that the entrepreneur also does not know the function and structure of his activity (not to be confused with the structure of the organization). Activity structure refers to the market space and consumers, while organization structure refers to the methods and ways of division of labor and coordination within the organization.
In such a case, there is only a small chance that sophisticated tools, including artificial Intelligence, can help him, because all these helping activities will be reduced to the entrepreneur's search for the answer to the question, "Where am I?". For any intelligent system to calculate a route requires two points: a start point and an end point for the journey. If the first point is unknown, there will be problems with the second point and the route.
First frontier: the category of knowledge. We are surrounded by the results of other people's understanding. Every product is knowledge. Bread is knowledge, an airplane, a brick is knowledge, and even a samovar is also knowledge. Here we can cite a similar interpretation of the concept of "knowledge" proposed by Marshall McLuhan in his book "Understanding Media: External Extensions of Man": some work has been done to some material, even if it is delivered from afar, therefore, the object stores labor and information, or technical knowledge, to the extent that something has been done to it [3]. Here we take a partly analogous approach.
The key point here is that all knowledge belongs to some category. For example, knowledge about how to deal with pain in the body can belong to different categories: medicine, nutrition, physiotherapy, surgery, massage, sports, art, music, aromatherapy, etc.
A very important point is that the choice of the first boundary of the knowledge frontier will determine the objects (products) that will be in the space of our activity.
For example, the choice of surgery will determine the operating room, medical equipment, hospital, etc. in our environment. Choosing a fitness trainer will determine the room, exercises and so on. But an aromatherapist with a scalpel (activities without clear boundaries) is something that makes no sense because we cannot define the environment in such a space. Our ability to navigate such an undefined space drops to zero, our ability to control our environment, to know it and to manifest our own causality in it also goes to zero. It becomes a kind of "dead zone", dead in terms of the fact that there is no life there in our usual sense, no development processes and no future.
Similarly in entrepreneurship: an entrepreneur solves the customer's problem "not in general", as an abstract concept, not tied to anything concrete, but in one way, using one or another category of knowledge. This "category of knowledge" sets the entire context of his interaction with customers. In the example of body pain, the entrepreneur will need to answer the question, "What exactly will he offer his customers as his 'solution' to their pain (problem): medicine, nutrition, physiotherapy, surgery, massage, sports, art, music, aromatherapy, etc.?" [1].
And the category of knowledge he chooses will completely determine the context of interaction with consumers who want to get rid of pain: surgeons will interact with one kind of consumer, physiotherapists with another, nutritionists with a third, fitness trainers with a fourth, and so on.
More often the opposite is true: the context of consumer interaction completely determines the category of knowledge that the entrepreneur uses in his/her interaction with consumers. Say, if we know that an entrepreneur runs a fitness group, we assume that this is the type of knowledge about fitness and its benefits to the human body that underlies his or her activities.
Returning to artificial Intelligence, its limits of usefulness are defined by its ability to compute. AI is capable of computation significantly better than natural Intellect. But when we cross the boundary of computational ability and come to the ability to recognize and understand our environment, this is where artificial Intellect quickly runs out of options and natural Intellect comes into play.
Imagine a caveman found a Zippo lighter from the future. The concept of a modern lighter would have been incomprehensible to the caveman, because his thinking could not accept the idea of lighting a fire without using rocks. An attempt to use two Zippo lighters as stones to light a fire would probably have failed. It would have been difficult for a caveman to understand how this unfamiliar object could produce fire, since it looked completely different from anything he had encountered before, and he would not have bothered to figure out how it worked. If a person doesn't know that lighters exist, what they are for, then artificial Intellect won't help him as far as producing fire is concerned, because he won't be able to describe and understand the categories of the thing in question now...
Artificial Intelligence doesn't survive in the sense we're used to. It may have morals, rules and laws when making decisions, but it can't make judgments about human survival because it doesn't know about what life is like: the feeling of having a child, communicating with friends, meeting a simple long separation, the death of a loved one, etc.
AI cannot genuinely sympathize, anger, admire, it can only simulate it. Its boundary of application is much earlier than understanding it is limited to the ability to make calculations. If we draw an analogy to the solar system with the center near the Sun as the area of understanding of the entire solar system, then the area near the Moon could in this analogy be compared to the area of computation on the way to understanding the entire solar system. Yes, an important milestone on the way to understanding has been passed, but there is still a long way to go if we talk about understanding the entire Solar System, not to mention other star systems and galaxies.
However, in terms of computing, artificial Intelligence is an indispensable human tool, like scissors for a tailor. Two kinds of Intellect, natural Intelligence and artificial Intelligence relate to each other as in the metaphor with scissors. Scissors are simple devices: two blades, two rings and in the middle of a nail. Two parts of scissors cut everything that comes between them. The blades themselves do not harm each other, and without each other are not capable of anything. And something small and imperceptible connects them to each other, but if this nail is taken out, then both parts lose all their abilities, they no longer cut anything together or separately.
This reflects the idea that every area of activity has something very important, but usually unnoticeable. Something around which the activity revolves. And this someone is, first of all, the entrepreneur himself paired with his worldview, upbringing, education, Intellect, etc. This is what without which any activity loses all meaning and becomes another "squirrel in a wheel", which runs a lot and in the end gets nowhere. And in this regard, a human himself has two servants: natural Intelligence and artificial Intelligence. When the scissors begin to command the tailor, we have a problem with the tailor and his state of mind.
Summarizing the above written, we can say that the boundary of application of artificial Intellect is the ability to calculate. The boundary of realization and understanding by a human being of himself and his environment is much farther away and is the area of "monopoly" for a human being and his natural Intellect.
References List: 1. Kaplan, J., Business incognita: How to expand the boundaries of entrepreneurial thinking. Moscow: Alpina Publishers. 2022. 256 p.
2. Kaplan J., Gurov F.N., "Business Intellect" and its role in various types of activity // Values and Meanings. 2023. № 2 (84). P. 125 138.
3. Kaplan A., Haenlein M., Siri, Siri, in my hand: who's the fairest in the land? On the interpretations, illustrations, and implications of artificial Intellect // Business Horizons. 2019. No 62 (1). P. 15 25.
4. McLuhan M.G., Understanding Media. External extensions of man, // S&P Global. 1964. P. 162
Jaroslav Kaplan Author of the book "Business Incognita. How to push the boundaries of entrepreneurial thinking". Expert in the field of sustainable development of organizations and discovering new sources of growth. Developer of the methodology of contextual market research. Member of the International Association of Strategic and Competitive Intellect Professionals SCIP (USA).
In this light (yet profound) business fable a very magical and sincerely nice goldfish, Goshio, navigates her aquarium and the seas of the Paraquarian world beyond. The heroine's journey is an allegory of the entrepreneurial world (and of life) – based on the author's own research journey to circumnavigate the fascinating World of Entrepreneurship. www.goshio.com