The impact of AI on Society: worker management & education

Last week I had been invited to participate at the International Women’s Day conference hosted by Women Techmakers Barcelona. I had the opportunity to talk about the impact of #artificialintelligence on society, notably in the realms of #AI for worker management and education: risks and opportunities. I discussed its benefits and the barriers to achieving a positive and equitable impact. WTMBarcelona 2024

What I intended to do is to provide a professional approach of this topic, as I work as Health, Safety and Wellbeing manager for an international technology company, and I am also a collaborate professor for Universitat Oberta de Catalunya . Two very interesting topics to think about, let's impact the future together

?Mental Health and working conditions?

Let me tell you that the link between work and mental wellbeing is crystal clear, now more than ever. Since the pandemic, trends like the Great Resignation and Quiet quitting have drawn attention to the importance of mental health in the workplace. Stress, anxiety and depression make up the second most common work-related health problem. Do you know that Mental health issues cost the global economy around 41 trillion dollar every year? Maybe not.

Moreover, last year, mental health and illness have attracted unprecedented attention in the Spanish public sphere. Let me share you some figures:

1. Antidepressant drug consumption has tripled over the past 20 years and is amongst the highest in Europe.
2. Around 1 in 6 people experience mental health problems in the workplace.
3. 40% or the mortal accidents at work in 2022 are due to heart attacks (300)

These figures lead me to my next point: the importance of the prevention of the psychosocial risks. A psychosocial risk combines the influence that psychological factors and the surrounding social environment have on a person's physical and mental wellness and their ability to function.For example, social and cultural norms, the way people interact with each other, job content or the way work gets done.? To give you some more examples, some working conditions as working alone, shift work and repetitive work can contribute to psychosocial risk; long, unsocial or inflexible hours; violence, harassment or bullying, excessive workloads… For that reason, one of my commitments at work is to identify and understand the common psychosocial hazards (or stressors) which can lead to conflict, distress, poor physical health, or occupational illness and put in controls to manage the risks.?

Do you know that any company has the responsibility to manage known psychosocial hazards? So.. why those "crazy figures"? Mainly they should carry out a risk assessment to identify psychosocial hazards and punt in place control measures to identified hazards. Moreover, managers and supervisors have to be trained to deal with psychosocial hazards. ?On the other hand, employees must treat everyone with dignity and respect at work and of course to follow the policies or procedures in place to carry out the work that they were trained for, in a safe manner.

I am going to conclude by saying that action to address mental health at work should be done with the meaningful involvement of everyone, not only employees and organizations but also governments. It is not easy, but with a range of legislative measures, discussion forums, and initiatives for employers, we are one step closer to having a more sustainable and healthy work environment.

Generative IA Technologies and Education

The speed at which generative IA technologies are being integrated into education systems in the absence of checks, rules or regulations is astonishing. As they have been dropped into the public sphere without discussion or review. Governments and schools are embracing a radically unfamiliar technology that even leading technologist do not clan to understand. OpenAI’s new chatbot is raising fears of cheating on homework, but its potential as an educational tool outweighs its risks. Education, given its to protect as well as facilitate development and learning has a special obligation to be finely attuned to the risk of AI, but too often we are ignoring them… really impossible to control.?To illustrate this point,?there are numerous examples of AI engaging in all sorts of conversations that are inappropriate for children and likely to adversely influence them as it is currently with social media.

Some schools have responded to ChatGPT by cracking down. Please Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It. Sadly, it is a matter of investment, time & money. It leads me to discuss about a surfaced dilemma in terms of investment choices and education. Education is riddled with inequality. In the same city, it is not uncommon to find schools with widely disparate instructional quality, equipment, and outcomes mere minutes away from each other. Rather than providing a solution to wealth inequality, education now reinforces it. Technology plays a role in creating this inequality in our classrooms, but it can also help overcome it. To what extend should we direct investments, towards building he capabilities of machines that act like intelligent humans, or towards building capabilities of living people?

I am going to conclude by saying that we must work with urgency to ensure that our education systems play a key role in getting humanity’s transition into AI world right.

#WTMImpactTheFuture #HealthAndSafetyAtWork?

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