Augmenting people potential to democratise action on sustainability has become one of the more important things to consider as an organisation's finance leader.
Among the many technological advancements at present, generative artificial intelligence shifts access to data and insights, giving everyone, individually and collectively, new potential to act on sustainability, according to Ernst & Young.
Sustainability is everyone’s business, and generative AI gives people new potential to act.
Given this, finance leaders have new abilities to ask better questions of their organisational data, giving them the insights they need to make decisions faster and more responsibly.
Generative AI can also help teams catalyse the creativity and passion of each employee to create sustainability solutions for their organizations and their clients, EY says.
Communities will benefit from new capabilities to assess risks and design place-specific solutions. Queryable Earth gives a sense of the very local sustainability data insight that communities could use to mitigate their climate risks, promote environmental justice, and create regenerative outcomes.
Further, generative AI will give individuals new potential to innovate, collaborate and activate for sustainability.
Emerging evidence suggests that GenAI reduces inequality by closing the skills gap. LLMs and Copilot applications democratise access to valuable skills, such as software engineering, design, creating art, and drafting papers. This lowers the barriers to entry by augmenting less-skilled workers.
Upskilling, culture and mindset are key
To unlock the transformative potential of generative AI in organisations, finance leaders must empower their people to access and act on the technology. But this requires more than simply making the technology available.
To realise the technology's full potential, broad upskilling is needed, not just in the new technology but also in new ways of working.
