Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere in tech now, from medical diagnosis and robots to household electrical appliances and gameplay. It is hard to imagine that you can actually communicate with a sound system and that AI products can solve your problems based on your needs. We have to think about what impact AI has on our working lives and the actions to adjust our workforce for this change.
Technological advancements are changing our working environments. Automation, algorithms and artificial intelligence have shown that they have the ability to do the equal or sometimes even better work than human beings in some working field, so in the short-term period, based on Lee’s forecast, 40% of the existing jobs in the world will be replaced by robots in the automating tasks. However, in the long-term, AI will also unlock some new opportunities and create millions of more jobs than it eliminates. Read more on PewResearchCenter and Fortune.
<center> “All those jobs that require low creativity and compassion will be taken by AI”</center>
The AI tools can be beneficial to the world, but without employee buy-in, they won’t succeed. It is important that companies put emphasis on narrowing down the gap between AI high tech and the ability of staff by providing some training plans. Employees will not reap the benefits if they do not have enough knowledge and are not confident in how to use it. The companies offering necessary training program gives employees access to re-skilling themselves for the AI area. Read more on MicrosoftUK.
Kai-fu Lee, the Chairman & CEO of Sinovation Ventures and president of Sinovation Ventures’ Artificial Intelligence Institute, has his opinion in regards to AI development. He thinks enterprises should take more responsibility to train their employees to ensure they are not unemployed. Some company cases also indicate that although AI brings effectiveness to companies and replaces some of the employees’ jobs, however, those employees are not unemployed due to that. Read more on NTES.
<center>“AI Superpowers” author Kai-Fu Lee | Courtesy Sinovation Ventures </center>
For example, Bansal, the leader of the Accenture AI department said that they have 110,000 people who are responsible for processing personal loans and mortgage applications. Right now, they already have advanced technology to apply AI, computer vision and VR to make the entire process completely automated and intelligent. It means 17,000 out of 110,000 employees are not needed anymore, however, they decide to re-skill those employees with other professional skills instead of hiring new staff. Accenture and other 97% of senior managers who put AI into work indicate that, in the end, they will combine the advantages of AI such as speed, accuracy, and predictive ability with humans’ creativity, flexibility and judgment to optimize the biggest value. Read more on Suloon and Jianshu.
「ATIOM TAKE」: Digitalization is a trend that is here to stay and the rapid development of AI does not mean employees will lose their jobs. AI tech can compensate for human weaknesses, take over the more unnecessary mechanical aspects of our work and optimize companies’ profits. Companies and their employees should increase awareness to do relevant training and re-skill themselves to adapt for more challenging and creative work which machines can not replace.
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