From AI to IA: hyperLOOP’s Takeaways from Graeme Codrington—and How to Put Them to Work in Your Business

06/10/2025

TLDR; Treat today's AI as Intelligent Assistance (IA), not artificial intelligence. Use it to scale speed, quality and consistency—then keep humans in charge of context, care and exception-handling. If you design for that split, you get "bionic" organisations: people-first, tech-powered.

What we heard in Graeme's talk at MANCOSA Jacaranda FM Business Breakfast (and why it matters)

1) Models guess, humans judge.
Generative models are pattern matchers. They're brilliant at drafting, summarising and transforming content—but they don't understand reality or values. That's why biases (e.g., accent, idiom, representation) creep in, and why "hallucinations" happen.
Implication: Put models in workflows where the cost of being wrong is low and human review is easy.

2) The "manager moment" is human-only.
When customers say "Please can I speak to the manager?", you've hit the limits of scripts and rules. That moment requires authority, empathy and discretion—none of which a model can authentically provide.
Implication: Design clear human escalation paths in every AI-enabled journey.

3) IA beats AI.
Think Intelligent Assistance: copilots that extend your team's reach (translation, versioning, research, personalisation) without replacing human discernment.
Implication: Measure IA by uplift in throughput, quality, and time-to-value—not by "full automation".

4) Prompt craft is a capability.
Personas, complexity ladders ("explain it to a 10-year-old → expert"), and debate prompts (two viewpoints, then a synthesis) dramatically improve outputs.
Implication: Treat prompts as reusable assets with owners, versioning and success metrics.

5) Augmentation is the destination.
The win isn't a robot workforce; it's superhuman teams—humans focused on judgment, creativity and relationships, with machines doing the heavy lifting around them.

hyperLOOP's IA Playbook: How to Operationalise This in 90 Days

Phase 1 (Weeks 1–3): Foundations & Guardrails

  • Map the Human/Machine split:

    • Machine-first: drafting emails, translation, research summaries, first-pass analysis, content variants, meeting notes.

    • Human-only: exception decisions, conflict recovery, pricing discretion, compliance sign-off, brand tone finalisation.

  • Define your "manager moments": Where do escalations occur in sales, service, billing, logistics? Document who steps in, the SLA, and the authority they have.

  • Create an IA Policy & Risk Register: Privacy, data retention, bias checks, human-in-the-loop steps, and an "abort & escalate" rule.

Phase 2 (Weeks 4–7): Pilot the Highest-ROI Journeys

  • Sales & Marketing

    • Persona-based content variants (email, social, landing pages).

    • Rapid A/B copy testing; weekly uplift reporting (CTR, CVR, CPL).

    • Prompt library for briefs, headlines, CTAs, and localised SA English/Afrikaans/isiZulu variants.

  • Customer Service

    • Copilot for response drafting + automated knowledge retrieval (RAG) from your help centre.

    • Hard stop on "manager moments" → assign named owner + resolution script.

  • Internal Ops

    • Meeting copilots (agenda, notes, actions), SOP drafting, and policy translation.

    • "Debate mode" prompts for decision memos: pro/cons + recommendation.

Phase 3 (Weeks 8–12): Scale & Instrument

  • Metrics that matter

    • Throughput: assets per week/agent.

    • Quality: human-edit minutes per item; brand-tone approval rate.

    • Impact: lift in conversion, NPS/CSAT, time-to-resolution, first-contact resolution.

    • Risk: escalation rate, hallucination incidents, bias flags.

  • Training & Change

    • 2-hour IA bootcamp: personas, complexity ladder, debate prompts, bias checks.

    • Build a "Prompt Guild" (champions per team) to own libraries and run fortnightly show-and-tell.

  • Governance

    • Quarterly bias & safety review; red-team your prompts with edge cases (accents, idioms, sensitive topics).

    • Maintain a kill switch: any staffer can escalate and override the bot immediately.

The hyperLOOP Stack (practical, vendor-agnostic)

  • Copilots: enterprise LLM workspace for chat + docs + slides.

  • RAG Layer: connect your knowledge base, policies, and product docs (with role-based access).

  • PromptOps: version-controlled prompt library with tags (use case, team, metric), plus usage analytics.

  • DX for Marketers: templated pipelines: brief → draft → variants → compliance check → publish.

  • Observability: dashboards for quality (edit time), impact (CTR/CVR, NPS), and risk (escalations).

Where to Start (pick one this week)

  1. Write once, localise many: Take a core email and generate 3 tone variants + 2 language variants; ship same day.

  2. Debate your next decision: Prompt two opposing viewpoints, then ask the model to synthesise a recommendation; discuss as a team.

  3. Service "manager map": List your top 10 escalation scenarios and script the first human response.

  4. Bias spot-check: Run your top prompts with different accents/idioms examples; log failures and add guardrails.

Our POV for South African leaders

  • Language & idiom matter. South Africans code-switch; we use metaphors and humour. Treat human final review as non-negotiable for customer-facing content.

  • Data humility beats bravado. Assume gaps in historic data. Track confidence, require citations for high-stakes outputs, and never fully automate discretionary decisions.

  • People first, always. Use IA to free humans for relationship work—sales calls, customer recovery, mentoring—where trust is built and revenue follows.

How hyperLOOP can help

  • IA Strategy Sprint (2 weeks): Human/Machine split, risk policy, metrics, and a 90-day roadmap.

  • Pilot Build (4–6 weeks): RAG knowledge copilot + Marketing copilot + Service flow with manager escalations.

  • Enablement: Prompt library, playbooks, and on-the-job coaching for your teams.

  • Governance: Ongoing bias testing, audit trails, and quarterly optimisation.

Bottom line: Don't chase "full AI". Build Intelligent Assistance that makes your people superhuman—and your customers feel seen. When you do, you won't just be keeping up with the future; you'll be designing it.

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