From CIO to Chief AI Officer: Focusing on the Business and Its People

Before being named chief AI officer of financial services firm Ameritas in January 2024, Richard Wiedenbeck spent 12 years as a CIO as well as growing a tech startup to $35 million in revenue. In his 30-year career in IT, he has held positions in the defense, manufacturing, consulting and software industries. In 2020, he was named to the CIO Hall of Fame.

“Unlike other emerging technologies, AI has the potential to transform every industry and do it in ways that I’m not even sure we can imagine,” says Wiedenbeck. “We didn’t want to just implement the technology for the technology’s sake. Productivity and efficiency is our goal.”

Wiedenbeck spoke to Heller Search Associates about why Ameritas created the chief AI officer role, how he’s approaching it and how he plans to use AI to increase efficiency.

Bob Scheier: How did Ameritas come to the decision to name a chief AI officer?

Richard Wiedenbeck: There was a lot of conversation about whether to create a chief AI officer apart from the CIO -- was there enough change involved, and enough changed elements to justify the post. We decided that there was because AI was not just about some technology. It was about transforming the way we work. We needed to make sure we were driving us toward something transformative for the business, not just about how to deploy the technology.

We felt this role needed a strong executive leader with business acumen as much as technology knowledge and understanding. 

How do you work with the CIO in your new AI-focused position?

The responsibility of the CIO didn’t change with my move. He has to care about all of the systems, processes and support needed to keep the company running. The CIO’s responsibility is total technology, benchmarking that spending and ensuring we maximize the value of our technology budget. Most of the responsibility for deploying the technology role still sits with the CIO. I try to be the best business partner to the CIO and work with that role to ensure we capture the value from AI while balancing the risks.

How are you working with other functions within the organization?

I have formed an AI executive council which includes our CIO, CRO, CHRO, and chief legal officer. This is basically a sub-set of our overall executive management team, and we do report our progress back to the Executive Office (which for us is our CEO, president and chief operating officer). As the CIO, we had a trusted partnership model in place and decisions about technology are made jointly by IT and the affected parts of the company. That has not changed.

How has your work in a startup environment helped you in this new role?

In some ways this is like doing a startup all over again, but within a company, which is a little easier. We need to continue to push the envelope of speed, balancing cost and risk, but pushing to get to value sooner. I think start-ups have a hunger in them, and a willingness to do the homework ahead of the project to ensure it will drive out some value. Putting these to work in the AI team and in the company is where that experience can help.

Experience informs my view. I spent 13 years as a CIO trying to control unhealthy shadow IT – poorly designed or implemented IT systems that cost too much or increase our risk. Now that I’m on the other side of the table, I don’t want to be the poster child for creating it. I want to ensure we do not over-pivot to pure start up mode, ignoring things that will cause problems two to three years down the line.

Where will you find savings?

We are starting internally with our own productivity and efficiency because we don’t want to stub our toe in areas that affect our customers or business partners.

One example is helping underwriters review handwritten notes. AI can help assimilate many, many pages of content from various sources and answer the questions an underwriter would ask. There is potential cost avoidance here and hours of time saved in getting a decision back to a potential customer.

Compliance is another major activity area for us. By using AI to summarize regulations, could 40 people do the work of 60? We’re not sure if it will be an actual cost reduction.

Once we have made progress on the productivity and efficiency side, we will do more with AI to increase revenue.

How do you handle employees’ fears that AI will eliminate their jobs?

I think there is the potential for us to do work drastically differently than we do today. That will affect what a person does and how they do it and maybe how many people we engage in doing it. Does that automatically equate to “I’m going to get rid of X number of people?” No.

But we do not and never have told people they have a job for life. There is a potential for some of the people who are here today to not be here tomorrow. One factor in such turnover is the changes in how people work in our company, and some people are more comfortable with change than others. So, in terms of the changing workforce, that hard question is usually how willing and able a person is to change. 

What questions would you ask your fellow chief AI officers?

The first question is on the people front. As we move into this world of AI we need different skills that are very different than data science. We call it an “AI engineer” but it also has elements of consulting, analysis and business skills. It is not data as much as it is learning how to put AI to productive use. Where will we find these people and how will we upskill them? Ensuring our plan for the workforce is being actively managed while we navigate the stages of AI is a critical piece of the puzzle.

Question two is how you build your AI governance. I think I have a reasonable AI framework but how does our compliance need to be reworked? Everyone is focused right now on security and privacy with AI, which makes sense, but I would like to know what other problems they are seeing around the corner, in the future. I have a list of 200 potential process areas I want to look at and see if we are OK with how AI will affect them.