The Momentum of Workplace AI 🤖
Is AI (Artificial Intelligence) coming for your job? Just the opposite. Here is what one source close to the subject has to say:
“AI will be used in the workplace to automate tasks that are currently done by humans. This will free up humans to do more meaningful work, and it will also make the job more comfortable and safe. There will be some tension between humans and artificial intelligence coworkers due to the difference in skills and experience. However, the two groups will likely get along well once they learn to work together.”
AI is not here to take your job — it is here to make it easier. Case in point: that was written by our own Decode_M AI Storytelling tool!
How did we do it?
Our team at Decode_M input a series of questions and using a quantitative data and an autoregressive language model, the AI Storytelling tool produced an intelligent, natural language and strategic answer.
Here’s what our team asked:
Will humans have AI co-workers in the future?
What is the future of AI in the workplace?
How will humans and AI coworkers coexist in the workplace?
... and voila: AI hot take! 🔥🤖 All of this underscores how far AI has come in the workplace. This shows us that AI is here to work with us, not against us.
WHAT’S UP ⬆️:
AI can help us with the mundane aspects of our jobs. By taking on tasks that otherwise take up valuable time — or even “undesirable jobs” that folks simply don’t want to do — humans can focus on the parts of their jobs that they find the most fulfilling. That means more freedom to interact with other teams, build skills, and grow. Thus newfound fulfillment can lead to enhanced productivity, more job engagement, and better work-life balance.
Improved HR: One of the segments AI can ironically have the most impact is the human category. AI can write job descriptions, evaluate resumes, schedule interviews and match candidates to open positions. This allows HR managers to spend more time on the interview process to ensure they hire the right candidate. AI can also analyze performance and survey employees to identify satisfaction levels.
Efficiency and Collaboration: Have you ever experienced the nightmare of scheduling a big meeting with busy employees and their shifting schedules? Let AI crunch the time slots and set it up! Colleagues can ask questions and look up information using digital assistants that instantly turn around answers. Gone are the days of waiting for a response from your human coworkers. Now, you can focus on the big projects without interruptions.
AI-Human Teamwork: Humans trust AI more than ever before — and actually work better together. A four-year USC study found that human-AI collaborations (like our AI Storytelling tool) outperformed both human-only and AI-only teams. And as cobots show, AI can learn from humans who train them.
WHAT’S DOWN ⬇️:
The narrative that AI will replace humans. The reality is much more nuanced. AI will actually make the jobs of countless workers easier. AI will create millions of new jobs — some that haven’t even been invented yet. Ultimately, technology will always need people.
WHAT’S NEXT ➡️:
| D Disruption |
One big reason people are talking about quiet quitting and why employers are having trouble filling jobs, isn’t because “no one wants to work.” It’s because no one wants to do work that’s unfulfilling. AI automating the mountain of mundane tasks that employees hate will let them rediscover their passion for their jobs. |
| I Innovation |
For one example of how AI is already innovating this space, see MTR, the Hong Kong subway. MTR relies on artificial intelligence working alongside humans — leading to a 99.9% on time rate for a city where over 6.7 million residents use public transit. The AI crunches millions of data points across the entire system to plan what construction, repairs, and other maintenance work is most important, saving the humans who actually carry out that work valuable time and resources. Next, the MTR will implement AI-enhanced driving of its already-automatic train operation. |
| P Polarization |
With new opportunities come new challenges, and that’s no different with AI. Take advances in deepfake technology, which combined with remote work could lead to a rise in imposter employees. According to Glider AI, “candidate fraud” has increased by nearly 92% since 2019.
Then there’s the uncanny valley: that unsettling phenomenon where the more human a robot or CGI looks, the less lifelike and more creepy it seems. Remember watching The Polar Express as a kid and being freaked out by all the characters’ dead, empty eyes? Imagine your coworkers looking like that. |
| S Stickiness |
Never forget the tragedy of Tay, the Microsoft chatbot that turned into a sex-crazed Nazi and got shut down after just 16 hours online. Tay was tasked with gazing into the abyss of 2016-era Twitter, and the abyss gazed back big time. That debacle has — hopefully — taught programmers valuable lessons on how to integrate AI technology into the workspace. |
| S Social Impact |
Best-case scenario, AI handling all the tedious and unpleasant parts of our jobs will drastically increase efficiency, freeing up humans to focus on creativity, innovation, and person-to-person interactions. This would be felt enormously in the knowledge industry. But not everyone is an architect or a management consultant, not every job necessitates a power lunch, and some people work best in roles that aren’t client-facing — or even coworker-facing. Where AI leaves this chunk of the workforce remains to be seen. |