With an increasing concern among white collar workers towards a potential job loss, the penetration of AI into the world of business proves to be necessary and unstoppable. Until today those people with concerns were not proven wrong; since more efficient AI devices and software replaced a lot of jobs including those of HR and customer service employees.
Even in the innovation department of leading European banks, you can find people who are afraid of losing their jobs due to emerging technologies and ever growing intelligence of software/machines. Even though these cases look like warnings of an upcoming competition between machines and people in business, they are actually examples of how we fail to communicate the potential and benefits of AI for them in their jobs.
It is now certain that in automation and recommendation stages AI is an effective and efficient way of doing business. For example, firms like Wade&Wendy already adopted different AI systems during the hiring process which saves them a lot of time in the first steps of recruitment by filtering CVs based on keywords. These kinds of adaptation of AI in business may lead to job losses, unless fellow HR people and managers of a company perceive the potential of AI correctly. Even though AI systems are created as experts in their field, they cannot provide information or service in related or similar topics, in other words they know one thing and they know it well. Using their expertise in related or similar areas, opening new horizons for their use in business and leading them are still up to people. As AI gets better and better in technical skills and operations, the value of soft skills that humans possess will become more and more important to succeed. These skills like leadership, creativity and communication will enable us to exploit the human asset and efficiency provided by AI, while coordinating all the assets and resources of the company towards a certain goal.
As a result, employees from all levels should now first learn as much as they can about how emerging technologies, including AI, may affect their industry and stop trying to compete with them in terms of technical skills and efficiency. They should rather understand the pros and cons of those technologies, and try to improve themselves in areas and skills where technology isn’t or will not be an expert.
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Hi Hayrettin,
First of all, nice written blog! Its a sure thing that AI offers many possibilities which wil heighten worker efficiency. Further on, the human factor can guide AI into direction it would not have gone on its own. In your blog you explain the positive effect of AI on business. I think we may assume that people active in business have the skills you mention. However, i believe you forget a large part of citizens who do not own this skillset. They are dependent on physical labour which requires little skill. This labour can easily be replaced by a bot with artificial intelligence. I found blogs online which share my opinion that low skilled workers will probably be out of work. See the link, if you would like to give it a read. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43259906