Artificial intelligence will make centaurs of us all

Job augmentation – not replacement – is emerging as the key AI benefit for the global economy, adding productive horsepower to a broad range of workers from the factory floor to the executive suite

IF YOU HAVE been following the rapid deployment of generative AI over the past couple of years, you will already know that artificial intelligence is here to stay. But where, exactly, will it be taking up residence in our future economy? Where should investors be deploying resources in order to fuel future growth and reap returns?

AI bots are already starting to replace some call centers and other low-skilled tasks. It is now clear that AI will have enormous implications for repetitive data-collection work that previously only human beings could manage. “Like 10,000 interns,” as Jonathan Berkow at AllianceBernstein memorably describes the impact of ChatGPT on the work of investment analysts.

But job augmentation – not replacement – is emerging as the key AI benefit for the global economy. The World Economic Forum’s Jobs of Tomorrow Report 2023 analyzes the impact of generative AI tools trained on large language models (LLMs) on more than 19,000 individual tasks across 867 occupations. The WEF, along with other researchers, concludes that while LLMs may potentially transform some tasks or even entire jobs by potentially replacing them with AI-powered automation, many other jobs will be enhanced through AI-powered augmentation, allowing professionals to be more efficient – and manual laborers to achieve greater productivity without increasing the risk of injury.

The WEF believes that routine and repetitive tasks are the ones AI is most likely to take over. “This means credit authorizers, checkers and clerks are most at risk from AI, as 81% of their tasks are automatable,” the Forum says.

But AI is not just about replacing call centers with bots. As many of us already know, chatting with a bot can be useful for trivial tasks, but the moment things get complicated, we need to engage with a human being. In the case of a call center, AI enables swift triage, allowing simple tasks to be handled automatically, while more complex matters can be elevated to a human responder. Far from replacing people at call centers, AI enables them to more efficiently deliver better customer service where it is most needed.

Generative AI and Jobs: A global analysis of potential effects on job quantity and quality, a 2023 study by the International Labor organization, found that “most jobs and industries are only partly exposed to automation and are more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by the latest wave of Generative AI, such as ChatGPT. Therefore, the greatest impact of this technology is likely to not be job destruction but rather the potential changes to the quality of jobs, notably work intensity and autonomy.”

I believe that AI will climb much further up the professional food chain, securing a role in the smartest jobs – not to replace highly-trained experts, but to significantly improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

By augmenting human skills from the factory floor to the executive suite, AI will add productive horsepower to a broad range of workers, transforming them from ordinary humans into AI-assisted centaurs.

Let’s take the world of medicine, where AI is poised to help revolutionize the work of medical professionals. Even surgeons.

It starts with patient admission. Billions of dollars are wasted each year, and thousands of patients receive sub-standard care, because the medical journey can start off on the wrong track. Diagnostic Robotics uses AI to augment the patient intake questionnaire – often conducted by overworked ER nurses – to make sure everything begins in the right direction. It catches simple errors during patient registration, combining cutting-edge data science capabilities with healthcare expertise to enhance efficiency and patient outcomes.

AI is also helping highly-skilled emergency doctors. According to the US Health Department, more than 5% of patients are misdiagnosed when they reach emergency departments, where teams are often understaffed and operating under tight time constraints. The AI-powered platform created by Israeli MedTech startup?Quai.MD?seamlessly connects to a hospital’s electronic health records. Using this data, along with triage assessments and expert opinions drawn from medical research, it proposes to medical staff the most likely diagnosis and best courses of action, saving time, money and lives.

“It helps the physician determine what the next step is for each of those potential diagnoses until they reach the decision to ultimately admit or discharge the patient,” says Shlomi Uziel, Co-founder and CEO of Quai.MD.?

Major challenge

A major challenge in medical care is the over-prescription of antibiotics, leading to the emergence of drug-resistant superbugs, especially in hospitals. MeMed BV uses machine learning to accurately distinguish between bacterial and viral infections in just 15 minutes from a small blood sample. The technology was granted FDA clearance in September 2021 and has recently demonstrated a 62% reduction in unnecessary antibiotic prescription rates in the first multi-center randomized controlled US JUNO clinical trial.

We have become used to relying on assistance from AI-driven satnav tools like Waze and Google Maps when we drive. Just imagine if the same AI-powered navigation could be deployed to assist surgeons executing complex medical procedures.

You don’t have to imagine, because it already exists.

Surgical Theater is like Waze for surgeons. It uses AI to create an augmented reality model of the brain, heart or other part of the human body so doctors can practice intricate surgeries to perfect their technique before they engage with the live patient.

It marks “a revolution in technology that has allowed us to advance the field and make surgery much safer for patients,” says Prof. Gary K. Steinberg, former Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford Medicine.

Google Cloud has two AI-powered life sciences solutions for drug discovery and precision medicine which “can transform life sciences organizations by accelerating drug discovery and bringing therapeutics to market faster,” says?Shweta Maniar, global director, Life Sciences Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud. “When patients are waiting for that life-saving treatment in cancer care or that quality-of-life medicine for migraine headaches, this faster time-to-market can have an incredibly positive impact on lives.”

At the big pharma companies, AI is already helping skilled PhDs to speed up the multi-year, multibillion-dollar process currently required to develop new drugs.

CytoReason, an AI-powered drug discovery pioneer, has multimillion-dollar contracts with Pfizer and Sanofi, and is working with many of the top global pharma companies, to develop disease models for innovative treatments.

In July, the company raised $80M?in a private funding round with participation from NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), and Thermo Fisher (NYSE: TMO) investing alongside OurCrowd. “Our collaboration with?CytoReason?leverages its cutting-edge immunology multiomics platform to augment Pfizer’s own R&D capabilities and generate invaluable insights into new drug development pathways for patients,” says Mikael Dolsten,?Chief Scientific Officer, President, Pfizer Research & Development.

AI is also helping oncologists.

OncoHost is using AI to develop cutting-edge precision therapy for cancer patients, driving advancements in personalized oncology treatment and helping to avoid the sometimes catastrophic effect of using the wrong therapy. PROphet, the company’s AI-powered precision oncology platform, accurately predicts cancer patient response to any given treatment plan using a single blood test. The next-generation diagnostic platform also identifies potential drug targets a patient is likely to respond to, aiding biopharmaceutical companies in advancing the development of novel therapeutic strategies.

Opthalmologists can also benefit.

People with both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are at high risk of developing diabetic retinopathy, caused by damage to the blood vessels in the retina and can lead to blindness.?AEYE?Health developed an AI-based method using a proprietary hand-held device to test for diabetic retinopathy by a family doctor, at a pharmacy, or even in a patient’s home, with immediate results. In April, it became the first ever FDA-cleared AI technology to autonomously diagnose diabetic retinopathy using a portable retinal camera. “The huge advantage in this exam is that it’s done in a fully non-invasive way, on the spot, no need to delay the patient,” Zack Dvey-Aharon,?AEYE?Health’s CEO and Co-founder,?tells NoCamels.

Augmentation revolution

AI will never replace these highly-skilled professionals, but – like electricity, phones and computers – it will augment their skills by helping to reduce the drudgery and speed up their workflow so they can focus on the superlative work that only human beings can do.

This AI augmentation revolution is exciting and the markets are responding accordingly, sending the stocks of AI infrastructure companies like NVIDIA through the roof. But, like any fundamental economic and technological change, the new AI dawn is unlikely to greet us tomorrow – or the day after. Venture investors should buckle in for an exciting but lengthy ride that, like most venture investment horizons, will yield meaningful results in a decade or more.

Only then will we know what exactly AI has transformed and how. Only then will we know which early AI bets have paid off. Investors can be fairly confident that AI will automate simple tasks, and that machine learning will enable pattern recognition and predictive analytics across a range of industries.

The challenge for investors is to work out whether the big applications are going to affect millions of call center agents or thousands of surgeons. We just don’t know.

We do know that AI presents numerous opportunities for progress, with the potential to create significant wealth across the board. AI has the potential to transform multiple industries, and to transform millions of workers into highly productive centaurs.

About ‘Investors on the Frontlines’

I’m the CEO and Founder of?OurCrowd, the global equity investment platform that gives individual accredited investors access to pre-IPO startup deals alongside top-tier VCs. If you are an investor, private family office or financial advisor, subscribe?here?for my biweekly commentary or follow me on?Twitter. I welcome your comments in the response section below.