CGI’s Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) knows that in the future, as AI becomes established in enterprise environments, their current roles will no longer exist.
Russell Goodenough, head of AI at a UK IT services company, finds himself driving the use of AI at a pivotal time for the technology.
While there are concerns that many of today’s jobs will cease to exist due to AI, Goodenough looks forward to the day when technology matures and his job title becomes obsolete.
“I’m our head of AI, but I think my job will be very temporary,” he told Computer Weekly. “I don’t think it makes any sense to have someone in charge of the Internet, for example.”
But while the title still exists, Goodenough is helping all CGI staff leverage AI in their daily work.
Following our contract extension with OpenAI, we are increasing the threshold by giving all 9,000 employees at CGI UK access to the enterprise version of our ChatGPT AI technology.
“In the UK, we’ve made sure that absolutely everyone has access to the enterprise version of ChatGPT: operations, project managers, service managers, finance teams, sales teams, HR teams, etc.,” Goodenough said.
Everyone on board
CGI started with ChatGPT 18 months ago in what Goodenough describes as a “relatively small-scale approach.” “We started with 250 licenses and at that stage CGI UK was evaluating ChatGPT and Microsoft Office Copilot,” he said. “There’s something for absolutely everyone.
“Whether you’re a corporate support department like our finance or human resources team, or a software developer, there’s a way to use this tool to work faster and faster and increase throughput.”
CGI, like many other IT suppliers, has been involved in machine learning, neural networks, and data science for years, but the world changed when ChatGPT arrived in 2023. “Ever since the world started talking about AI in a different way, we’ve been trying to put a different wrapper around AI and grow it as a center of excellence,” Goodenough said.
He leads a program that accelerates the adoption of ChatGPT across the business, including the use of ChatGPT in the services we provide to customers and to support our own operations.
CGI is monitoring the use of AI in its own operations and can point to real increases in productivity.
“Some teams are moving toward agents and are starting to see significant productivity gains in individual workflows,” Goodenough said. “Last week, I heard that automated testing productivity increased by 5x. I’ve heard that some rapid prototyping environments where we do front-end development with clients are seeing even more gains.”
He said significant productivity gains are enabling the company to grow its business rather than cut costs.
“The way it’s manifesting itself is that no one is losing their jobs at this point,” Goodenough said. “Throughput is what matters. Our main focus is on [supporting customers] Because it is embedded in critical national infrastructure, critical issues can be addressed much more quickly. ”
Avoid top-down pitfalls
Goodenough said the company has sought to avoid the pitfalls caused by a top-down, even centre-down, approach to AI deployment.
“I’ve always worked with evangelists and dedicated teams across the business, so I know who the recruitment agents are and I work with them,” he said. “I’m leading the charge in communicating that, talking about the positives, and recognizing people internally who have done great things.”
Goodenough said the company has seen AI use among programmers go “through the roof” in the last year. “Over the past year, that’s the area where we’ve made the most progress,” he says. “My words, “I could have saved an hour a week,” became saying, “Dear, I can now work five times faster.”
CGI has 92,000 staff around the world, and while the UK is leading the OpenAI effort, other regions are spearheading efforts using other AI platforms.
For example, in the APAC region, our team is working on a comparable program that works with Google Gemini, and in Canada we are working on something similar to Anthropic Claude. “In a relationship, someone is always in control,” Goodenough said. “I manage our relationship with OpenAI.”
Different regions are spearheading the AI platform, but all regions will have access to the results. CGI has just under 18,000 people using ChatGPT, 8,000 of whom are in the UK.
“These 10,000 users who are outside the UK are spread across all of our other businesses,” he said. “That’s how we work. Someone always takes the lead.”
worrying signs
But while vast resources are being invested in the development and deployment of AI around the world, Goodenough believes there are worrying signs.
“I just don’t understand why AI would create an image of a woman with no clothes on when there’s a huge backlog of work to be done in the NHS and courts,” he says. “I think that’s despicable and I don’t understand how we were able to see that side of things.
“I promise you what I’m trying to do is apply AI to high-stakes cases, because if it’s law enforcement or law enforcement or healthcare, you have to figure out how to use AI to your advantage.”
