What is the initial idea that pops into your head when you think about Future artificial intelligence?
During my worldwide tour, I got a variety of answers to this question while talking to people from all kinds of backgrounds — from entrepreneurs to real estate professionals to digital marketers to tech executives.
Interestingly, the responses were largely the same: Future AI is seen as a threat. For some, the risk is that “robots will dominate the planet,” while others believe AI is poised to take people’s jobs.
But is AI really the cause of any positive or negative developments in our society? Or is it just a tool, like others, where the outcome depends on how we choose to use it?
This article aims to highlight how AI is influencing the future of work and to help reduce fears that are based more on what is unknown than on actual evidence.
Looking Back
Historically, many tech advancements have triggered similar worries and resistance. Many were concerned that the start of the industrial revolution would eliminate human jobs. Later, the emergence of personal computers and the internet caused unease, with people fearing that machines becoming more proficient would endanger their jobs.
Yet, these advancements have generally resulted in creating more opportunities than they have taken away. AI, often viewed as the peak of many years of technological development, follows this pattern as well. The key point is that artificial intelligence is progressing quickly, and the kinds of jobs it can handle go beyond just basic, routine work — it is gradually entering fields that were previously thought to be solely for humans, like generating content, helping clients, and making choices. This brings up a significant question: what implications does this have for us?.
Changing Work Environments
This year, I have attended numerous conferences and observed that AI is now integrated into nearly every field.
For instance, robots have become a regular part of manufacturing assembly lines. They can do jobs both quicker and more accurately. Likewise, Future AI systems analyze data to suggest which investments a person should make to improve their financial portfolio.
In the healthcare sector, professionals now rely on AI for diagnosis, discovering new drugs, and even caring for patients. The way you shop at stores has also evolved; there’s an AI assistant available to guide you through the process.
On one side, news organizations report job losses linked to automation; on the other, experienced professionals argue that AI is helping humans rather than replacing their jobs. This can be quite perplexing for many. So, here’s a straightforward explanation that might help clarify things: The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Yes, there are numerous AI tools and applications that have made it surprisingly simple for anyone to accomplish various tasks independently that were not feasible until recently. Essentially, all that is required is to skillfully instruct these models to obtain a basic version of the desired output.
Nevertheless, the quality of those results cannot be directly used and must be checked by a human expert, whether it is for advertising text or data analysis. Thus, fundamentally, most AI tools are utilized to generate ideas, create a template, and draft the initial version of code, but the responsibility for refining that output into a professional and usable form rests with the industry expert.
Another case of AI diagnostic tools providing guidance and assessments to doctors helps them to make more exact decisions, but the part of doctors, developed over decades of medical training, is still crucial.
AI is helping professionals little by little focus on more important and strategic projects by relieving them of mundane chores. Accountants might, for instance, devote more time to advising customers on financial strategies and less to balancing spreadsheets.
New Era of Positivity
AI has effectively taken over many repetitive tasks, leading to the emergence of new roles such as generative AI architect, prompt engineer, AI ethicist, policy specialist, and AI product manager.
The importance of Chief AI Officers is also highlighted, as they are responsible for ensuring that AI development serves humanity positively.
There is No Off Switch
A major worry for many is that the speed of these technological advancements is quicker than how fast human professionals can retrain themselves. Workers prepared for outdated jobs may struggle to transition to A focused positions without significant reskilling. For example, truck operators could be concerned about autonomous vehicles, and their fears are justified.
This reminds me of how the Swedish company Ikea effectively managed such a shift. They took an innovative route to business growth: to improve customer service by effectively managing inquiries and providing personalized experiences, they created an AI bot named Billie. This bot handled increasingly common customer questions. Now, you might be curious about the fate of customer service representatives. Instead of replacing its 8,500 call center workers, IKEA chose to invest in their retraining, transforming them into interior design consultants.
Isn’t that impressive? Their success didn’t stop there: those interior design consultations resulted in $1. 4 billion in sales.
A careful and informed viewpoint on Future AI is to view it not as a rival, but as a partner, one that can assist us in solving current challenges more effectively while giving us the opportunity to consider those “unimaginable” issues that need our focus and attention to foster a better future for everyone.
Vidhi Chugh is an expert in artificial intelligence and a leader in digital changes, focusing on combining products, science, and engineering to create large scale machine learning systems. She has received awards for her innovative leadership, is a writer, and speaks internationally. Her goal is to make machine learning accessible and clear, so that everyone can participate in this change.
