Artificial intelligence has inspired visions of a near-utopian future: cures for cancer, breakthroughs in space, and even a world where money matters less. But the people who will experience that future the most may also be the ones most harmed by it now.
Speaking at Fortune’s Workplace Innovation Summit on Wednesday, the dean of innovation and professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business Jeff DeGraff admitted young people are increasingly driving the newest forms of innovation—often outside traditional corporate structures.
“Look to young people, they’re creating federations of meaning, they’re trying to cure river blindness in these loose affiliations, they’re creating walkways for animals,” he told Fortune C-Suite and Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh. “They’re doing things outside the traditional industrial structure.”
Yet despite their desires to transform the world toward a bright future, DeGraff said society has failed to adequately prepare young people for the AI transition.
“We’ve sort of given the short end of the stick,” he added in the panel titled What High-Innovation Teams Do Differently. One of the most glaring examples, he said, is how companies are deploying AI: primarily for efficiency.
