Amidst the fear and uncertainty triggered by the dawn of the AI revolution, there is also hope and excitement about how AI might become a job creator rather than a job destroyer.
It’s easy to see how the fear and excitement triggered by the latest advancements in AI remind people of prior technological shifts like factory automation that resulted in massive changes in the workplace. The robots are taking our jobs, again. But this time, the threat appears aimed more at white-collar jobs in industries such as content creation/journalism, financial advisories and software development.
Just like with factory automation, there are those who are already predicting and potentially even experimenting with how AI will replace many of these jobs.
But another way to look at the situation is to see that AI can become an “enabler” to help people work faster and more efficiently on higher-value work rather than replacing them. Let’s also not forget that AI is not perfect and that we’ll continue to need human oversight to fact-check whatever it produces.
“AI is here to stay,” says Christine Kiefer, an SVP at Experis, “but that doesn’t necessarily need to be a scary thing. Humans are needed to understand the potential and to design approaches where humans and AI collaborate.”
I connected with Kiefer over email to get more insights about how AI will continue to disrupt white-collar jobs—and the steps people can take today to both protect their jobs and take advantage of that AI-powered future.
Our automated future
In the past, the use of machines like robots was aimed at automating repetitive physical tasks like spot welding, drilling holes or painting machine parts. AI tools like ChatGPT, on the other hand, are best suited to impact jobs that require the aggregation and analysis of data, drawing conclusions about that data and communicating those conclusions, says Kiefer.
She points to the example of lawyers and paralegals who spend a significant amount of time researching case law and precedent. That work can now be done by AI tools in a fraction of that time, saving many hours. Another example might be a financial advisor who reviews economic and financial data to make recommendations and investment strategies for their clients. Much of that same groundwork can now be performed by AI. Even jobs that involve content aggregation and commentary, such as some facets of news reporting, could have some of the initial research and positioning done by AI tools.
But it’s also not time to panic, says Kiefer.
“AI will likely not replace massive numbers of jobs wholesale, but more likely portions of jobs,” she says. “The reality is that today companies are starting to examine the potential, but it’s still very early in the process of being fully adopted into most organizations. And, as with automation, it will take some time to see where it lands within individual roles, industries, and organizations.”
Leaning into the AI revolution
While the AI revolution might not take over your job tomorrow, it behooves every one of us, especially those members of the younger generations who will be trying to grow their careers in the AI era, to consider how they can work alongside AI.
“One of the best ways to dispel the fear of the unknown and embrace the potential is to research the tools available and experiment with potential usages,” says Kiefer. “There are a number of accessible AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, available for anyone to utilize.”
Kiefer suggests people should individually experiment with “outsourcing” portions of their job functions to AI and then review the results by asking questions like:
- What worked well?
- What still requires intervention?
- What parts does the AI do better or faster?
- Which tasks are better suited to utilizing a human’s critical thinking skills?
There are also other areas to lean into the AI revolution, even if you don’t have the technical background or interest in learning skills like data analytics, machine learning or natural language processing (NLP).
“There will be an emergence of roles dedicated to the governance and policy around utilizing AI in an organizational environment,” says Kiefer. “Data privacy and protection, as well as ethics considerations, will be a significant and evolving area for corporations, schools, healthcare organizations and others to manage and dedicated teams will be needed to design and manage that governance.”
Any time the topic of AI comes up, it’s also crucial to remember that while this technology offers ways to substantially improve the efficiency of how work gets done, AI still makes mistakes.
“AI is dependent on the data it consumes and the conclusions it draws are not always accurate,” says Kiefer. “Anything created by AI will still require human review and common sense.”
Embracing our humanity
The one step that all of us can take to help protect our jobs from AI is to fully embrace what makes us human. While AI might be great at sharing data and information, it also can’t relate and connect to people like another human being can.
“Although AI can impersonate a human, it cannot be a human,” says Kiefer.
For example, AI can be used to predict healthcare outcomes based on historical data. But it cannot compassionately share difficult news with a patient or discuss treatment options in a way that considers human emotions.
“This is where real human connections and relationships between patient and provider are critical,” says Kiefer, “and where the healthcare provider can leverage the outputs of such tools but not be replaced by them.”
Another example is how AI is being used in the classroom to deliver information and instruction to young students. But Kiefer says that AI is not able to properly assess a student’s interaction with the material. In a word, it cannot forge a human connection.
“AI is limited in its ability to adapt teaching style to learning receptivity and to work with students to apply learnings to real-world situations,” she says. “AI can lay the foundation for a work product, but a human still provides ingenuity and the emotional connections between people that are so critical in areas like healthcare and education.”
Rolling with the changes
Being successful in an AI-enabled world requires flexibility and adaptability—which should be a strength for young people as they kick off their careers.
“Younger generations have grown up in an age of rapidly evolving technology in which how, where and when we use technology is changing at a pace never seen before,” says Kiefer. “Rapid adoption of new technology and ways of interacting comes naturally to this generation and will serve them well as the technology continues to evolve.”
In other words, people from the younger generations have the potential to harness the power of AI in ways we have yet to imagine—and perhaps even use it to create more human jobs than ever.
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