Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a developing technology in which computers learn to do tasks that once required humans. Some of these tasks include understanding text or writing new content. At its core, AI uses complex algorithms and learning models to let machines process enormous quantities of data. These algorithms learn from their data sets, adapt to new situations, and have the potential to improve over time.
So how will automation and AI change the rat race? The rat race is a competitive working environment where people compete for productivity, profit, and success. Automation and AI can help people streamline repetitive tasks, allowing people to focus on skills that a machine can’t replicate. Some examples of these skills include critical thinking, creativity, and interpersonal skills. Machines can also work tirelessly without needing a break, allowing people to either rest or be even more productive with the time machines can save.
How Businesses Use Artificial Intelligence Today
Businesses today are already using AI to simplify tasks and analyze data. You might have used one already — virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana are powered by AI and utilize the technology to assist you better.
Other applications of AI in business include email filtering, automated chatbots and responders, and creating predictive models for supply chains. AI is also generally widely accessible to most people with internet access.
Artificial Intelligence has a broad range of business applications and offers companies a competitive advantage. For more information about the nature of AI, we’ve written a short article titled “What is Artificial Intelligence?”
How Will Artificial Intelligence Affect the Future of Work?
AI has already made its mark on work, and its influence will continue to grow. As AI evolves, it will have significant implications for many industries and job roles. AI-powered machines can efficiently carry out routine and repetitive tasks with precision and speed. It can automate jobs that involve manual labor, data entry, or straightforward decision-making processes.
We must acknowledge that AI will be a significant disruptor in the future of work. Machines have historically replaced or augmented human labor. For example, many clothes today are no longer handmade except for specific artisanal pieces. Factories may opt to replace human laborers with machines — and these aren’t artificial intelligence yet.
However, AI isn’t without limitations. For now, people are still necessary to perform tasks requiring creativity and critical thinking. AI is, for now, limited to computational and repetitive tasks.
Therefore, we can expect artificial intelligence to do two things:
- simplify or automate routine tasks so that people don’t have to do them, and
- allow people to focus on creativity, lateral and critical thinking, and original concepts.
One prime example of these two ideas is in healthcare. Dr. John Halamka states that “The technology won’t replace doctors, he said, but “doctors who use AI will probably replace doctors who don’t use AI.”
AI can assist in disease diagnosis, image analysis, patient adherence, administration, and a host of other tasks in the medical field that take up a lot of time. It frees up time for doctors to do things AI cannot do. One prominent aspect is human interaction — most people would prefer to speak to a human nurse than a screen.
Replacing Jobs, Creating New Ones
AI will replace many job roles but will also create new ones. AI is still just a tool, and people will need to learn the skills to utilize it. These new job opportunities will require specialized skills and knowledge, creating a demand for upskilling and reskilling programs to prepare the workforce for an evolving job landscape.
The rise of AI will also change the most valued skills in the workplace. We will likely see a rise in soft skills involving human-to-human interaction, networking, and people management. For a deep dive into the top skills you should have at work, we recommend reading our article, “Most Demanded Skills at the Workplace.”
AI Is Only A Tool, For Now
As it stands, AI can’t yet fully replace creatives or fully perform creative tasks. There are specific human skills AI can’t replicate.
Furthermore, AI still makes several mistakes due to the nature of how it works. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in chatbots — they don’t actually analyze their responses.
How can AI Help Business Growth and Boost Business Potential?
Artificial Intelligence is a significant help for businesses. Companies that utilize AI will have a significant advantage over companies that eschew the technology. In a nutshell, AI offers five benefits to businesses:
- Smart Decision Making
- Personalized Customer Experiences
- Augmenting Human Ability
- Efficient and Smart Marketing
- Security Improvements
- Smart Decision Making
One of artificial intelligence’s chief uses is in data analysis. An AI can look at a tremendous amount of information and parse it much more quickly than a human can. Furthermore, someone in a company managing an AI can have it analyze a broad range of sources very quickly, such as social media, review sites, customer feedback, and more. It may also be able to correlate against other data sources the company collects, including financial data.
Having an AI in your company helps business analysts predict several things such as:
- trends
- customer preferences
- potential shifts in the market
- what competitors are doing
As we’ve stated, a critical benefit here is that it saves time. The company won’t need to waste valuable human hours reading through dozens of colossal spreadsheets and potentially risk mistakes due to human error. It’s highly unlikely that a machine will make a mistake while parsing a spreadsheet — although it doesn’t hurt to check.
AI is making a huge difference in how big companies use data by streamlining analysis and making decision-making more efficient and accurate.
- Personalized Customer Experiences
Everyone likes having their experiences tailored to their personal preferences. Artificial intelligence can help personalize a customer’s experience, especially on a website. This is already a common use for AI — recommendations on YouTube, for example, or suggestions on Netflix.
AI is also helping in customer service. Have you ever talked to a chatbot on a website that you could almost swear was human? These virtual assistants are usually AI-powered, and they are getting better and better at helping customers. They can answer questions, give support, and even process transactions all by themselves. This means that human customer service representatives can focus on more complicated tasks that need their kindness and understanding.
These AI virtual assistants are designed to talk to customers just like a human would, and the more they do their jobs, the better they get. Furthermore, they can handle as many customers as their servers allow at almost any time, unlike a human assistant who can only handle one customer during working hours. AI is becoming very important in customer service for many businesses because it can assist customers quickly, saving time, money, and effort for companies.
- Augmenting Human Ability
AI can help businesses do several things more quickly and with better quality by augmenting human skill sets. Remember, machines can quickly parse large amounts of information quickly and work without needing breaks. An AI can also follow rules and instructions to the letter without deviating from its assigned tasks. This removes a lot of the repetitive, and frankly, boring tasks involved in office work.
These qualities of AI allow people to focus their energy on other tasks. It also adds a new skill that people will need to learn to maximize the effectiveness of AI: managing instructions. Machines work solely off the input they receive from humans, making it critical that workers using AI understand how best to provide it instructions that create helpful output.
One field where AI has been a significant help to people is content creation. AI tools such as ChatGPT can write dozens or even hundreds of articles quickly that human editors can polish and edit. There are also several tools available to help creatives upscale, fix, and edit images, graphics, and videos. These tools use special algorithms to analyze data, develop ideas, and create content that meets specific goals.
Lastly, it can also analyze data and make visual content like infographics and videos that explain complex information in a fun and attractive way. By automating repetitive tasks, AI is helping content creators work more efficiently, create more engaging content, and keep up with the demands of digital content creation.
Promoting Remote Working
During the pandemic, businesses also relied heavily on AI to perform tasks that human employees couldn’t.
As Aashi Saxena, a Doctoral student at Jaipur University, said: “The use of AI got accelerated during the pandemic when businesses resorted to AI-powered tools to minimize workforce deployment in the backdrop of social distancing.
Singapore comes first in the list of artificial intelligence readiness with a score of 9.2, followed by the UK, Germany, the USA, and Finland. In India, over 70% of Indian enterprises implemented AI in some form or other. YouTube, Google, Ola, Uber, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix all use AI.”
- Efficient and Smart Marketing
Another way that businesses can take advantage of AI’s strengths is through market research. Even the best human marketing teams won’t have the time to read, parse, and process every single post on Facebook or Twitter — but an AI can. This technology is already in use, especially on Twitter, but it raises many ethical questions.
For instance, many bots on Twitter have reportedly been able to identify when users want a particular image or design on an article of clothing, usually a t-shirt. The bot then takes the referenced image and sends it to a printing shop.
Stealing the artwork of Twitter users is clearly a breach of intellectual property and rights, but it does show how an AI can perform market research. It can view the posts of hundreds of thousands of people and identify trends, needs, wants, and desires of huge portions of the world population.
Social Media Engagement
Businesses can also use AI to augment their social media presence. Building off the idea of seeing what people are talking about online, we can also use AI to see public opinion on a particular topic or company.
AI-powered tools can also automatically schedule and post content on social media, monitor conversations, and provide insights for improving social media strategies. This saves time and effort while enhancing the effectiveness of social media marketing efforts.
For more ways to use social media as a business — and get ideas on how to use an AI for it — we recommend our article titled “10 Ways to Use Social Media as a Small Business”.
- Security Improvements
Artificial intelligence can parse through colossal amounts of data. Reviewing all the computer activity in a company would be an arduous and time-consuming process — making it the perfect task for artificial intelligence.
Having a tireless machine go through a company’s data decreases the chance of human error. People get bored doing one thing over and over, which can make them complacent. An AI won’t experience that boredom, allowing for perfect or near-perfect analysis of a company’s security data.
Taken a step further, an AI can handle low-level but frequent security issues, filter out false positives that a human would have to manually check, and react to bots with lightning speed.
How Can People Keep Up with Artificial Intelligence?
People need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of artificial intelligence. There is no way that a human will be able to compete with the raw computing power of an AI, but on the other hand, AI can’t match a human’s creativity. Learning about AI and leveraging its strengths is vital to keep up with companies that use it.
- Stay Curious
Keep asking questions and be curious about AI. Read articles, watch videos, and listen to podcasts that talk about AI in a way you can understand. Stay curious and explore new ideas related to AI.
- Join Online Communities
Join online groups where people talk about AI. These groups can help you stay updated with the latest trends, learn from experts, and meet people who like AI too.
- Take Online Courses
There are online courses that teach you about AI. Some are basic, while others are more advanced. These courses can help you gain practical skills in AI.
- Experiment with AI Tools
Try using AI tools and applications. Some tools, like chatbots and image recognition software, are available for free or at a low cost. By using these tools, you can learn how AI works in real life and get hands-on experience.
- Collaborate with Others
Work with other people who are interested in AI. You can join meetups, conferences, and workshops to meet other AI enthusiasts. Collaborating with others can help you learn new things, share your knowledge, and stay updated with the latest AI advancements.
It’s important to stay informed about AI and adapt to the changing world of technology. By staying curious, joining online communities, taking online courses, experimenting with AI tools, and collaborating with others, you can stay updated with the latest AI advancements and continue to learn and grow in this exciting field.
Embrace the opportunities that AI offers and strive to remain updated with its latest developments to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of AI.
Staying informed about AI requires continuous learning and engagement with the AI community. By following trusted sources, engaging in online communities, attending events and conferences, taking online courses, experimenting with AI tools, and staying updated with research papers and journals.
For another look at how technology is changing the landscape of work, we’ve written an article titled “The Changing Landscape of Work: How Technology Affects the Workplace.”
Related Questions
- Will AI dissolve jobs?
AI has the power to change how industries work, which will affect many jobs. Tasks that are repetitive and routine could be automated by AI, leading to job loss in industries that rely heavily on these tasks.
However, AI also has the potential to create new job opportunities, especially in areas related to developing, implementing, and managing AI technologies. Individual people and organizations will have to focus on developing skills that complement AI to adapt to the changing job landscape with the rise of AI.
Skills that complement AI include critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving. Continuously learning, upskilling, and reskilling can help individuals stay relevant in the job market and be adaptable to new technologies.
- What are other transition challenges in the workplace?
Preparing the workforce for the era of AI will require investing in training and education to help employees learn about AI.
This is important to make sure that employees can effectively work with AI and adapt to the changing workplace environment.
- How will automation change society in general?
Automation has the potential to greatly impact the economy and society. While it can save businesses money and make them more efficient, it can also disrupt traditional business models and supply chains, which may require society to adapt and address any negative economic impacts.
Additionally, automation can cause social disruptions, particularly for workers who lose their jobs to automation. This may necessitate societal changes, such as retraining programs, safety nets, and policies that address income and social inequality, to support those affected by automation and ensure a smooth transition for society as a whole.
It is crucial to ensure that the benefits of automation are distributed equitably and proactively address the economic and social implications to minimize potential adverse effects.
