A.I. May Take Our Tasks But IT Will Never Take Our Jobs!

AI is not here to take your job, just your tasks

G’day G’day,

If like me, you have attended a few conferences this year then you will know that regardless of the industry they have been dominated by AI discussion. It’s generally one of four topics:

1. ?AI Ethics – This is always a good one and even better when held as a debate. Hearing the pros and cons or the scary and the smarts, however, I'm yet to validate any of the scary examples bandied from the stage. Most are internet ghost stories from fake news.
2. How to use AI – Honestly, please stop wasting our time. I’ve seen so many people demonstrate how to use ChatGPT or Mid-Journey. I can try it for myself or there’s this thing called YouTube if I want to learn about clever prompts. You’re not an A.I. expert because you can show me a product. If a vendor got up on stage and did a demo of their product, the audience would muster a collective sigh and would no doubt be annoyed at the sales pitch.
3. This is how we are using AI – Love it. Tell me more about how you are practically applying it. Tell me about the benefits and the pitfalls. Tell me about your learnings and how your employees and customers reacted to it. More of this, please.
4. AI is here to take our jobs – My favourite because it's not entirely true but I enjoy the one-sided nature of the pitch. That said, please stop fearmongering to get a headline. It’s this point though that I want to expand on in this article because I don't believe AI is here to take our jobs.

The stratospheric rise of AI

When ChatGPT fell out of space earlier this year, the rise of AI sparked both excitement and apprehension, particularly when it comes to its potential impact on our jobs. While some people incite fear that AI will replace employees and lead to widespread unemployment, I think a more realistic, exciting and pragmatic perspective is that AI is not here to take your job but to take your tasks. In this article, I want to clear up how I believe AI is reshaping roles by automating tasks, enhancing productivity, and actually creating new opportunities and job satisfaction for employees.

Let’s take a quick look at the history and evolution of work.

A while back I wrote an article called The Age of the Employee that explored the technological advancements that have transformed the nature of work. From the manufacturing era and industrial revolution to the digital era and the age of information, each wave of innovation has brought about changes in how tasks are performed. AI simply represents the next stage in this evolution, focusing on automating routine, repetitive, and data-intensive tasks.

AI excels at tasks that are rule-based, data-driven and involve recognisable patterns. This could be activities like data entry, image recognition, language translation, and transactional, fact-based customer support. AI simply enables employees to offload mundane and time-consuming activities, allowing them to focus on complex, emotive, creative, and strategic aspects of their roles. AI can act as a powerful tool that complements employee capabilities.

For instance, AI can analyse vast amounts of data to provide insights, which employees can use to make informed decisions. This cohesion between employees and AI harnesses the strengths of both, resulting in more efficient and accurate outcomes and allowing more space for empathy.

If you’re happy and you know it… let AI take your tasks

We should be happy about AI taking our tasks. For the most part, people don’t actually like tasks. I say this because when I was a people manager the first thing that would happen when a new task was set as part of a KPI (key performance indicator) was that people would try to game the tasks measurement.

We need to stop protecting our tasks as if they are our job and let AI take over routine tasks and allow it to open up opportunities for us to acquire new skills and adapt to changing industry demands. Rather than rendering certain jobs obsolete, use AI to enable employees to upskill and reskill in other areas. This continuous learning cycle increases employability, enhances a sense of mastery, and assists individuals to thrive in this evolving work landscape.

Veering slightly away from my point that AI is not here to take our jobs but I think worth mentioning. AI has also given rise to entirely new roles that cater to the development, implementation, and maintenance of AI systems. AI engineers, data scientists, machine learning specialists, and AI ethicists, among others. As AI becomes more integrated into various industries, these positions will continue to grow in demand, offering diverse career paths for those interested in shaping the future of technology.

The Wrap Up

AI is not here to take your job, it’s here to take your tasks. So, if your job is just a bunch of simple repetitive tasks should you be worried? Well, maybe. But is a reflection on you? No. This reflects poor job design. So, what should you do? Explore what parts of your role excite you and challenge you and start to look at how you can improve them and do more of them. Look at the parts of your role that are replaceable by AI and start looking at how much time would be freed up to do the things that you love and that interest you. Maybe even go a step further and see how you can help and learn to automate some of your tasks. Look for moments where human-to-human interaction is needed. Humans need humans. AI will spur on a renaissance of human connection and the arts. Find moments that lean towards what makes us human and find ways to make them your job. Explore the things that are valuable but hard to measure because what gets measured often gets automated.

This should also be a wake-up call to leaders and HR folk alike to design careers and complex roles, not task handler positions. ?DON’T MAKE TASKS THE JOB.

The introduction of AI should lead to job transformation rather than elimination. AI is not a harbinger of job loss, no, it’s a catalyst for task automation and job/career enhancement. As AI continues to evolve, it will no doubt change the future of work, but the overarching impact will be on tasks rather than jobs. By allowing AI to take over repetitive and data-intensive tasks, employees should be freed up to focus on creativity, critical thinking, empathy-driven moments and innovation and this can only be a good thing for employee engagement and in turn, the customer experience.

Like with any of my articles, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Until next time and as always,

Hooroo