The AI revolution is not coming. It’s here. Workers are anxious and confused while some are confident and optimistic. Whether we are welcoming of AI and embrace it or reject it in the workplace, it doesn’t matter because AI is the future. Individuals can choose to enhance their skills and capabilities by leveraging AI tools and AI agents, or risk falling behind in a rapidly evolving landscape.
A recent survey of nearly 3,000 business leaders around the world, conducted by HR software platform Workday, found:
*91% of global executives are actively scaling up their AI initiatives.
*74% of executives use AI for more than 25% of their work.
*82% of HR leaders believe AI is essential to their company’s success.
Why do executives and business owners believe AI integration is essential for their companies? In our system of capitalism, technology has historically given us a competitive edge over our competitors. And AI is that latest revolutionary technology to make certain tasks exponentially more productive and efficient. That translates to cost savings and additional profit.
Unfortunately, capitalism also often reveals that some workers are no longer needed, which is a main concern about AI for many employees.
For now, at this stage of AI, although AI can significantly enhance efficiency, this does not necessarily imply that employees have no value to add or should be dismissed. However, there are credible AI experts who predict there will come a time when advances in AI could lead to mass unemployment and human work obsolescence. Statistics and theories of such a futuristic scenario of human displacement are easily available. Just ask an AI chatbot to find them.
The application of AI is happening everywhere. Here’s one example of how AI can improve one area of work, HR Management. AI will increasingly be able to do the boring routine tasks in HR like processing benefits and working on payroll. Then that frees up HR to do more meaningful responsibilities of improving employees’ relations, development, and addressing employees’ needs.
At the same time, if you are an employee in HR solely responsible for processing benefits and payroll, there might be other additional responsibilities the company might want to give you as such routine, administrative tasks become easier and faster to complete.
This is just one workplace example in one industry. Companies, mostly large ones for now, in almost every industry – finance, banking, manufacturing, retail, transportation, insurance, law, healthcare, publishing – are looking at AI, automation and robotics to increase efficiency.
Glass half full, half empty
AI could be viewed as a glass half full or glass half empty. In a glass half full perspective, clearly AI will bring about efficiency like never seen before. Humans will always be needed and maintain agency. AI will not completely replace jobs but just change the nature of work. AI is a tool to enhance human capabilities and their unlimited potential.
Glass half empty perspective: AI will lead to substantial job losses and hurt the economy and widen income inequality. Human obsolescence in many areas will be psychologically and emotionally damaging to millions. Workers might be more efficient, but employers will only require more work. It’s the same reason why new hires often get chastised by their veteran coworkers in the company for being too efficient. Humans are not ready for such a powerful tool in AI. We lack ethics and fairness. Worker exploitation will be rampant.
Any one or all of these scenarios mentioned above could be true with AI in the workplace. As individual entrepreneurs, companies, bosses and workers navigate through this new work environment, there will be varying outcomes depending on how much AI is integrated as well as the moral character of their companies’ upper management and CEO.
AI experts say there could come a time when a one-man, two-man entrepreneurial operation with their multiple AI agents could be outputting work equivalent to a traditionally small-to-medium size company making millions of dollars a year.
AI experts also warn that at the extreme end when AI reaches superintelligence and would outperform humans at every cognitive task, there are unknown risks to humanity itself.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant scientists in modern history, said the emergence of artificial intelligence could be the “worst event in the history of our civilization.”
He said, “Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So, we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”
Already causes for alarm are deepfakes — fabricated images, videos or audio recordings designed to appear convincingly real, manipulating reality by replacing faces in videos or altering voices. Deepfakes are increasingly becoming realistic that it’s often difficult to decipher what is real or not. Deepfakes have been used during elections to undermine our democracy. Audio deepfakes are used in fraudulent telemarketing.
The transition into the world of AI will be rough for millions. Baby boomers and Gen X could be more resistant to change. Then there are Gen Z teenagers already making money off AI. We must prepare as best we can. It’s clearly a brave new world.
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