Generative AI and the "Dull 20"

[ This post was originally published on the Orchestra AI blog ]

There are a?lot?of generative AI thinkpieces out there. On blogs, on LinkedIn, on podcasts, lots of folks have capital-O-pinions on what GenAI means to the future of work. And these opinions tend to the extremes. "AI is coming for our jobs!" vs "AI can't be creative and its output all looks generic".

What if both camps are missing the point?

I see AI doing what any new technology should do for people. Get rid of the "Dull 20". AI's not coming for our jobs, at least not all of them. Instead it will take over the dull, repetitive tasks that make up roughly 20% of the work we do. These are the tasks that don't require creativity, the tasks that we'd gladly hand over to a machine. If we get this right, we could make our jobs more engaging, more rewarding, and ultimately, more human.

The Dull 20 in action

All of us are likely familiar with the Dull 20, regardless of the work we do. The Dull 20 is a salesperson going back through meeting notes or transcriptions of Zoom calls to update her pipeline in the CRM. It's a nurse scanning seven barcodes to record a single medication dose for his patient. It's a teacher logging grades in a system that somehow needs three different browser tabs open to get all the data entered.

Heck, there's even a Dull 20 in AI work, and you've probably experienced it if you've tried to copy and paste the output from ChatGPT directly into a blog editor screen and found out it completely messed up the formatting.

What we gain by leveraging AI

It's almost insulting to compare these tasks to the work of coal miners and migrant laborers whose jobs inspired the neologism?Dirty, dangerous, and demeaning, but the concept is similar.?

By automating the Dull 20, not only are we taking boring tasks off people's plates, we're also making processes more efficient. Generative AI doesn't get tired, distracted, or bored, so it can perform these tasks quickly and (hopefully) accurately.

When AI handles the mundane parts of the job, humans are free to focus on the remaining 80% - the tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence. This shift can lead to more satisfying and meaningful work, allowing people to excel at what they do best.

Generative AI in marketing

I've talked to plenty of people in marketing who are worried about job loss from AI. When I describe?Orchestra's platform?they see this:

When you use a product like Orchestra, your team can be more productive and happier with the work they do and the results they can generate. It'll look more like this:

Side effects of implementing AI

Of course in any industry, with any tool, especially one as powerful as generative AI, there are risks if it's not implemented properly.?

We just looked at a chart showing AI wouldn't cause job losses, but what if your job is mostly in the Dull 20?. Data entry professionals, Powerpoint wranglers, and even some office staff might have more than 20% of their job be replaceable by AI, and as a society we'll have to address the consequences head on.

Even in fields with plenty of creative work, if 20% of a large team's work is automateable that's likely to require fewer staff for the same level of productivity. We've seen this in other industries with robotics and automated assembly, and we're going to need to be better about upskilling and retraining to ensure we don't have entire sections of the country spending decades struggling to transition their workforce to other industries.

Wrapping up

Although the field of AI has been around for decades, the pace of change has accelerated exponentially since 2022. We don't yet know what the ceiling is for this technology but we can already see its benefits. This blog post alone would have taken a few hours to write even a couple of years ago, but Orchestra gave me an outline and editable body copy in minutes and saved me from my own personal Dull 20; staring at a blank screen trying to get started.