Ever since the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) model DeepSeek, business leaders I have met from all over China have been talking about AI and what it may mean for their and business and for others’.

Before DeepSeek and other Chinese AI models showed up, ChatGPT and other incumbent AI models have been used by companies across many industries. However, the cost-effectiveness and the open-source nature of DeepSeek have spurred the adoption of AI across the board. For example, BYD has integrated DeepSeek into its vehicles, offering advanced self-driving systems for free or very low cost. Other automakers, including Zeekr and Geely, along with leading appliance manufacturers like Haier, Hisense, and TCL Electronics, as well as tech giants including Huawei and Tencent, have all unveiled plans to incorporate DeepSeek’s models into their operations.

All of a sudden, everywhere I go, I am hearing people saying they need to learn how to use DeepSeek.

It’s now clear that for businesses, the ability to use DeepSeek has become a basic requirement of skills, similar to knowing how to use email.

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Businesses are also talking about using AI as a means for achieving higher operational and organizational efficiency. Some are already taking action. And this phenomenon is taking place not only in China but also in other places. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, a leading customer relationship management software as a service provider, said he didn’t hire any software code developers because that task can be replaced by AI agents. In China, I have also heard how an owner of electricity generation plants has greatly reduced the size of his operations team because AI can capably replace people.

Such headcount reductions will undoubtedly bring up ethical issues; and this is just the starting point for more substantive changes that will take place in organizations and businesses overall.

Industry boundaries will shift as a result of digital technology and AI. New industries will emerge while some old industries will disappear.

As industry boundaries shift, the customers and competitor of companies will also shift. The identities and value propositions of companies will also need to be redefined.

Strategies will need to be redefined and new products and business models will need to be developed commensurate with the new strategy.

For example, as smart homes, smart cars, people and humanoids are becoming ubiquitously interconnected, the boundaries of the auto and appliance industries will overlap. Auto and appliance companies will become competitors or collaborators. Their fate will become intertwined. The entire supply chain ecosystem will also be redefined.

This merging trend was already happening in the digital era when AI was not as prevalent. Today with the rapidly increasingly prevalence of AI, this trend is being accelerated and intensified as more application scenarios are being made possible with newer and more cost-effective technologies.

Customer experience will be redefined and transcend physical space. The “customers” will include not only people but also humanoids who will become increasingly capable and involved in more activities.

As AI and digital technology empower more capabilities, the need for middle management will become less. Organizations will increasingly become flatter. Customer-facing teams will need to become much more agile and flexible and be able to build customer intimacy through a “segment of one”.

The interactions between customers and companies’ front line staff will become more one-on-one and much more interactive in an “always on” and co-creation basis; the manner of customer interactions will be fundamentally redefined.

In a way, business is fundamentally a tussle between the customer and the company (provider). Traditionally the provider produces what it believes the customer wants. The power rests more on the provider side. In the digital era, the power begins to shift to the customer as it can provide real time and individualized feedback to the provider who in turn supplies what that customer needs. In the AI era, this trend will accelerate and intensify as the customer can now have the ability to generate even more individualized needs often with scenarios.

This will generate new challenges for the provider and also the supply chain. On the other hand, AI and digital technologies will enhance the provider’s ability to create and deliver products and services that the customer needs. Similarly, supply chain capability will also be enhanced as well.

For people, AI will create unemployment for some or even many. This phenomenon has taken place in every period of major change in history. AI will also render many disciplines redundant. Copy editors, bookkeepers, call centers, and the like will face elimination.

However, new tasks will emerge as new needs of society emerge. These will likely come from areas of discovery in technology or science and other aspects that will help advance humanity. As mundane work is being undertaken by AI and robots, humans will increasingly shift their attention to areas of creativity.

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This has implications for training and development of staff within organizations. In the past, much of corporate training has even focused on skills training in order to execute tasks. In the AI era, training will focus on developing people’s ability to perform critical thinking and analysis using first principles.

During the mobile internet era, businesses people were talking about an “internet mindset” as opposed to the traditional mindset of doing business. The internet mindset called for rapid experimentation, creating value through others, leveraging the power of data and building business platforms and ecosystems.

As we enter the AI era, a new way of thinking about business will inevitably emerge. An “AI mindset” will become the new norm in doing business.

As these profound changes take place, business leaders need to ask themselves how they can get ready for — and succeed — in the new world.

The author is founder and CEO of Gao Feng Advisory Company, a strategy and management consulting firm with roots in China.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.