Technology Days: An AI Democratisation Journey Begins with a Single Step

Abstract

Due to AI’s numerous potential benefits, embedding AI as part of an organisation’s analytics portfolio has become essential. Also, organisations want to avoid a situation where only a few business areas reap the benefits of using AI. Some organisations are setting up central AI teams. However, a central AI adoption approach is not always feasible, as domain knowledge, specific to each business unit, is often required. An alternative approach would be to democratise AI and position citizen data scientists across the organisation. These citizen data scientists do not necessarily need the same level of skills as a central AI expert team; however, they require a certain level of AI-related knowledge. Technology Days are popular events that provide people insight into today’s latest technologies and can be used for marketing, recruitment of experts, or knowledge transfer. The paper investigates the effectiveness of an automotive organisation’s use of Technology Days to support the democratisation of AI by creating the intent among employees to become citizen data scientists. Based on the constructs of the technology acceptance model, a survey was used to gather feedback from the Technology Days attendees. A single case study contextualised the organisational setting and suggested that Technology Days can be used to showcase the effectiveness of AI and the ease of use of AI tools. Technology Days can help create a positive attitude and create the intent of employees in the organisation to become citizen data scientists. However, Technology Days remains only one of many incremental steps towards democratised AI.