56 IN VIEW TECH & AI
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What we’re doing with the cluster is bringing technologists into the room to support manufacturing and engineering organisations. To provide education and knowledge transfer, but also to sit with them and understand what a manufacturing process needs.
BS: I’m not sure if anyone knows about the amount of admin you need to do in education, but that’s significantly been reduced by AI, which, in turn, allows you to focus more on the student, which is a win-win.
It really has to change the education system. No longer can you assess from report writing, you’ve got to assess from skills, which is brilliant for us, because learners need to know how to do something.
Asking a student a question and them giving you an answer is all well and good, but them being able to ask the correct question is a lot better. That in turn leads to asking AI the correct question to get the answer.
PO: Businesses don’t know or understand the benefits and the pitfalls and what it might mean to them and the future workforce. There’s too much stuff in the press and the internet that gives a different perception of what AI actually does. There is quite a bit of scaremongering.
It can help you save time, if we can draw that out and explain that to businesses, perhaps they’ll see it in a different way and use it in a positive way.
MI: Evolution is sometimes the hardest thing and sometimes it happens without your involvement and sometimes you’re forced into a situation. Sometimes you take the opportunity and lead the evolution, but the question here is, ‘Is this region going to be part of the leading? Or is it going to be dragged into an evolution that it then doesn’t really have that much of an opportunity to capitalise on?’
If you’re in an organisation that doesn’t have data architecture, data builders and data retrievers, then effectively all of this is useless.
One of the critical barriers for employers is those softer skills required for AI: critical thinking, which is about retrieval and curiosity and application and domain expertise.
HG: The reality is your AI will never be able to reason with you, it can never change what a human actually does. AI will do what you ask it to.
If you’re in business and you’re not using AI you’ll be pushed to the bottom third of your sector inside two years by your competitors that are using it.
Don’t think AI is here to take over your job. Every person that works in the business can use AI effectively to help increase the efficiency of their role, whether it’s accounts, HR, marketing, whether it’s drafting, whether it’s coding, whether it’s critical thinking. AI is the modern-day calculator.
Sooner or later, everybody’s going to realise that you are going to be able to pull your phone out of your pocket and ask the power of a million minds a simple question and receive an immediate answer. The second everybody in the world gets that notion, it’s the rocket ship.
TS: It’s used across the board in our business. We get web copy from clients and you can tell that it’s just been churned out of ChatGPT. Then you have to try and educate them that they can’t use it. Again, it boils down to education.
Could we help each other to better develop this sector?
MI: You’ve got to be unified in ensuring the bigger opportunity comes in and underneath that there has to be a natural energy of competition.
If I was sitting and asking ‘What does Lancashire try and lead on?’ I’d say let’s become a data region.
PO: Funding is key, we need to attract that funding into Lancashire and we need to use the public money in the best way that we can, to provide that support and help to grow those ecosystems.
There’s a need to support businesses, bring them together and get them talking, get them to collaborate. It’s happening.
ME: Technology is no longer about sitting in a room coding; you have to have soft skills. You have to have communication skills and you’ve got to be able to understand business process. We have to collaborate to make sure the talent has a bit more about them than just being able to use ChatGPT to fix a bit of code. Collaboration has to be targeted.
Organisations that traditionally haven’t sat down and spoken need to do About us
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Tom Smith Founder and CEO, Complete Online
a little bit more so we enable every business in Lancashire to have that tech skill, which is not purely about sitting in front of the computer.
TS: I’m on the advisory board of the Institute of Technology (IoT) and we have a meeting planned about how we shape not just the soft skills but what we can add onto courses for people coming into the industry.
HG: Through our links with Burnley and other colleges and organisations like Mo’s we’re doing well unlocking the elements of talent we require, and I don’t mean tech talent.
We have what we call a ‘broken arrow’ policy and if you want to be good it is fine, good pays the mortgage and you will have a good career but don’t come to Sundown. Only come to us if you want to be great.
We look at people with lived experience, who know what it’s like to fail because the biggest achievements in life come from failure and, when we identify those particular people with those assets, we know that they have the personal characteristics to go forwards.
BS: We’re passionate about solving the problem of talent. There’s nothing we can’t do in terms of tech, but it’s still about getting the message out to schools about the different courses.
The more opportunities we have with businesses in the area to connect and understand their problems, what their talent need is, getting them connected with students, it is a massive win for everyone.
CM: Collaboration is at the absolute heart of everything that we do. If you provide the space and the co-working collaboration comes naturally. We have collaborative clusters that we manage as well as the overall tech cluster.
From a funding perspective we’ve got the partners in place and we also plug into Innovate Lancashire.
We are inviting our county neighbours to come into Lancashire, to knowledge transfer and share some of the good stuff that they’ve done in Manchester and, basically, how Lancashire can learn from that, so watch this space.
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