In a recent eye-opening interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chan, J.P. Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon made a startling prediction about the future of AI and how it will impact the next generation. The chairman, who has always been a stern advocate for in-office work, forecasted about how AI will impact our professional lives, noting that the next generation will work a 3.5-day work week. “People have to take a deep breath, technology is always going to replace jobs. For J.P. Morgan, if it replaces jobs, we hope to redeploy people.”
While the executive of America’s largest bank was keen to highlight some downsides with misuse of this new technology, pointing out negatives such as cyberwarfare, he echoed the reality of AI taking over “every single process, notetaking, every app, every database. It might be as a co-pilot or it might replace humans. It’s idea generation, it’s a little bit of everything. It’s a living breathing thing, there will be all different types of models,” Dimon announced.
In light of this month, which is Mental Health Awareness Month, this insightful interview poses the question:
Is a four-day working week finally poised to be our new reality?
Instead of fearing AI, Dimon’s interview suggests we should embrace and welcome it with open arms, as it augments our work, making it indeed possible to work smarter and not harder or longer.
Here are a three ways to partner with AI to augment human intelligence at work:
Enable healthy communication and relationship-building
AI can, as Dimon pointed out, listen in to real-time speech and take meeting notes whether in a video call or at an in-person networking event. It can also section these notes, identify themes, and generate action items and key takeaways. This greatly reduces the risk of misunderstandings, important details forgotten, or missed action items after meetings, and saves you time when sending a follow-up email post-meeting. In addition, Natural Language Processing (NLP), can help you reduce misunderstandings and analyze tone and sentiments of written communication, enabling stronger rapport-building and connections with your team, clients, management, or stakeholders.
Stimulate and unleash creative thinking
Scale your team’s (and your own) creative juices through utilizing AI. For example, you could use tools such as ChatGPT, or Typeshare, which, if you enter the right prompts, will generate a host of beneficial information and possible solutions that you may not have originally conceived on your own. While human creativity and innovative thinking is a skill that certainly is still in high demand, augmenting the brainstorming process with AI will shorten the process and make it a more enjoyable experience.
Reduce repetitive and time-consuming work
Ever felt annoyed that repetitive admin work is hindering your progress, wasting your time, and is a poor use of your skills? After all, that is not what you signed up for when you landed the job. You want to do meaningful work, not “work about work.” A study showed that repetitive tasks such as inputting data onto a CRM or spreadsheet, collecting data, scheduling reminders, responding to endless email threads, or attending meetings that would have worked better as emails—consume up to 60 percent of an average employee’s time.
Recurring tasks deplete a company’s efficiency, squandering approximately 19 working days a year. Therefore, using artificial intelligence to automate most of these tasks, is a worthwhile endeavor. Thankfully, AI has already begun to step in and fulfil many of these roles, freeing up employees’ time for doing actual work.
So it’s no wonder that Dimon predicted that a 3.5-day work week could be a reality for most people in the near future.
While on the one hand, those whose work is predominantly administrative could see their roles eliminated or be transferred, this heralds good news for those seeking to prioritize their mental health and wellbeing, reducing the risk of burnout. If a four-day work week touts tremendous results including 71 percent of employees reporting less burnout, imagine what boundless productivity and improved wellbeing we can expect for the future with a 3.5-day week?
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