People in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is revolutionising many workplaces and industries and it’s hard to predict the extent to which its impact will be felt heading into the future.

While it is important in many instances to approach AI with some caution, it has already and continues to benefit humans in a multitude of ways. It contributes to error reduction, increases productivity, can be applied in medicine and allows for more creative and interactive jobs.

But first of all, what is artificial intelligence?

At its core, AI (or machine intelligence) is the ability of a computer system to undertake tasks that humans need intelligence to do. Essentially, machines will demonstrate kinds of intellectual behaviours on a human level.

It can be anything from a program that can play chess to driverless cars and medical diagnoses.

Most of us use AI every day. It’s in our smartphones, devices, emails. Applications like Snapchat Instagram, Siri, Google home, and GPS all employ AI, usually in the form of face, text and voice recognition. According to Baidu’s former Vice President and chief scientist, Andrew Ng, AI is the  “new electricity”.

“Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.”

These technologies have now matured to create and drive substantial “business value”. Rather than fearing AI, businesses and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) need to harness AI’s capabilities. It has the potential to revolutionise the workplace in a way that benefits the people. CIOs are at the helm of this change and need to become better translators between technology and business.

For managers and employees alike, the key to successful leadership and productive workplaces is to embrace and work with the changes and improvements that new technology brings, rather than fight them. Viewing AI as an ally rather than an adversary offers up new opportunities, potential for new role creations, for current jobs to evolve for the better, and the chance to be more creative.

For example, lawyer Adrian Cartland designed the robot Ailira, an AI legal assistant that helps people and lawyers with legal problems. The chatbot can search millions of cases to find relevant material in a matter of seconds and it has been helping hundreds of people in NT to write wills. It has also been programmed to specialise in tax research and now domestic violence. While there are concerns about it taking over some of the tasks of paralegals, others have argued that maybe that’s a good thing. If AI technology can complete time consuming and monotonous tasks, it leaves humans with more time to focus on other areas and roles.

By integrating AI within frameworks of organisations, businesses, government departments and services, people have the opportunity to thrive in this new digital age rather than work against it. Machine learning and AI aren’t necessarily taking jobs away, rather they are augmenting the skills of professionals. Combine the benefits of AI with the human traits that machines can’t replace (i.e. empathy, judgement, emotion, people skills) and we’ve got ourselves an exciting future ahead.