One of the paradoxes of the AI story that is playing all around us is that despite the wealth of opportunities that AI offers to organizational leadership competing in an idea-economy, it is the fear of job-displacement, industry disruption and the commoditization of proprietary knowledge that is dominating the conversation. This is a grave misrepresentation of what AI can and cannot do, and left uncorrected can damage an organization’s willingness to engage with AI as a competitive asset. Analog meets AI Ironically, while AI discussions are typically associated with the new ideas it can produce, one of the overlooked dimensions of AI’s promise is the old ideas it can conceivably resurrect or repurpose. The utility of old ideas is all too often overlooked in the search for new ones. Yet, there is a long history of new ideas being little more than the restating of ideas forgotten from the past. Forgetting Old Ideas The late Oliver Sachs M.D., neurologist, naturalist, and historian of science wrote at length about such forgetting, which he referred to as scotoma, and which “…denotes a disconnection or hiatus in perception, essentially a gap in consciousness…,” an apt way of describing an inability or unwillingness to pursue ideas, no matter where or when they first appeared. Sachs offers many illustrations of this, including: John Mayow’s work on oxygen in 1670, a bit more than a century before Lavoisier; Oswald Avery’s recognition of DNA’s role in heredity, almost a decade before Watson and Crick, which won him the accolade of being “the most deserving scientist not to receive the Nobel Prize for his work;” Gregor Mendel’s overlooked work on plant genetics in the mid-nineteenth century; and even Archimedes’ purported invention of the Calculus, two thousand years before Newton and Leibniz. One can only imagine how history would have changed if any of these accomplishments had not been forgotten. The Rolling Stones Not only in science, but also in the arts, old ideas can unleash new ones. The Rolling Stones have long included Chicago blues music in their warm-ups and practices, but on one occasion, while “hitting a wall” on recording a new tune, guitarist Keith Richards said “let’s play Blue & Lonesome,” a familiar old blues piece, to clear their heads. At once, they knew that they were on to something good[1] and went ahead to record an entire album of such music. Appropriately, Richards has frequently said that he wants his tombstone to read He passed it on. In this case, it couldn’t be truer; and these old ideas turned out to be a major commercial hit, as well. MORE FOR YOU NSA Warning—Change Your iPhone And Android Message Settings A Disappointing Update About ‘Solo Leveling’ Season 3 ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap And Review: I’m Starting To Worry About This Show Pablo Picasso Few paintings have been reinterpreted as often as Diego Velazquez’ Las Meninas, the seventeenth-century group portrait of figures from the court of Spain’s King Philip IV. Most notable of these interpretations are a suite of paintings, also called Las Meninas, by Pablo Picasso in the 1950s. Picasso said of this homage to Valazquez, that “if someone wants to copy Las Meninas, entirely in good faith, for example, upon reaching a certain point and if that one was me…I’ll try to do it my way, forgetting about Velázquez. The test would surely bring me to modify or change the light because of having changed the position of a character. So, little by little, that would be a detestable Meninas for a traditional painter but [it] would be my Meninas.” This was the same Picasso who taught us that “good artists copy, great artists steal.” The original idea might have been Velazquez’, but the new version could only be that of Picasso. That should be the essence of repurposing old ideas into new ones; not to copy, but to learn and possibly reinterpret. AI as a Medical Miracle A few weeks ago, The New York Times reported that Dr. David Faigenbaum, a University of Pennsylvania physician, used Artificial Intelligence to identify an improbable, and overlooked, solution to the life-threatening rare blood-disorder of his thirty-seven-year-old patient. Magic? Yes, of course! But, magic that was made possible by the power of his AI model to consider 4,000 drugs against 18,500 diseases in order to score possible efficacy to a new situation. This approach uses the power of AI to scan the literature horizon, as broad as it might be; to go back in time, as deep as is requested; and to do all of this fast. What follows such a search is largely knowledge-worker intensive, but supported by the AI platform the knowledge-worker is better prepared, and better supported, than doing it without such machine-derived insight. This is the power of AI. Not machines alone, but AI-augmented human discovery. Putting AI To Work In Complex Organizations At the conclusion of his review of scotoma and the forgetting of old ideas, Oliver Sachs concluded that “Ideas, like living creatures, may arise and flourish, going in all directions, or abort and become extinct, in completely unpredictable ways.” None of which excuses a failure to search such sagas for good ideas that might be repurposed today. Sachs’ scotoma does not have to be inevitable. Old, or overlooked, ideas can live in new forms. What is needed is organizational leadership that is well-enough informed regarding AI’s positive potential to see the benefits, despite the risks, and be courageous enough to experiment with what is needed to turn AI into a real advantage. To be sure, this will require a rethinking of how new, as well as old, ideas enter the innovation process. New innovator roles and new business models might also be involved. How to search, must be complimented with where to search, for here is where learning how to learn becomes as important to an organization as what we already know. This is as every bit real innovation as creating a device; it’s just different. We need more leadership that celebrates such differences; “without eccentricity, there is no art;” visual art, audio art, technical art, business model art; the list goes on and on, and so does innovation. 2 [1] Rolling Stones, Blue & Lonesome, liner notes. 2016 [2] Original quote: “[we should] forgive artists their eccentricities, because without eccentricity there is no art.” Preston Lauterbach Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades