Are we all behind on AI?

If you are feeling left out of the artificial intelligence (AI) conversation, you are not alone. AI is impossible to escape. It dominates business news headlines. It has created trillions of dollars in market capitalization in a short time. It promises enormous benefits for humankind, but it also introduces substantial risks, including the large-scale displacement of jobs. While the tenor is at a fevered pitch, the reality on the ground does not match the headlines. As I look at our company and speak with other business leaders, the AI conversation centers on pilot projects, early successes, and complications capturing large scale benefits. I believe AI will be a transformational technology over time, but it’s near-term impact on business and work is often overstated.?

This is not the first time a new technology has promised to quickly revolutionize work. I began my career in the late 1990s, during the dot-com boom. Like AI, it dominated the headlines, attracted massive investment and promised transformational change. Companies across industries raced to develop a dot-com strategy for fear of being left behind. The euphoria ended abruptly when the recession hit in late 2000. More recently blockchain, cryptocurrency and the metaverse have each dominated the conversation, only to be relatively quickly replaced by the next big thing. The gold rush mentality helps feed an echo chamber on the latest technology, so everyone assumes everyone else is using it. The reality on the ground is messier. While there are early adopters creating profound change with AI, most companies face real hurdles in creating large scale change. Legacy systems and poorly structured data limits the effectiveness of the most powerful tools. In addition, to make real impact in a company, AI tools need to be connected to people and processes. People can build new skills and processes can change. However, building those skills and making durable process changes take time.

Along with the near-term hype of AI, AI’s promise (or threat) to eliminate a large number of jobs is likely overstated. There is no doubt AI will transform how we work. The technology has the potential to eliminate or dramatically change many transactional jobs. However, I’m less convinced AI will fully replace a wide variety of jobs. History points to the fact that technology is most powerful when it is paired with humans. More importantly, our society has a long history of identifying new, higher value jobs during technical disruption. The industrial revolution provides a clear example. In 1900, 40% of employees worked in agricultural-based jobs. Today, that number is under 2%. While technology revolutionized agricultural production, new types of work emerged. The unemployment rate over the last 20 years of 5.7% is a testament to the U.S. economy’s ability to adapt.

Our company is a great example of how these perspectives come together. In the last 18 months, we have piloted and scaled AI across many areas of our business. Many of our trucks now use AI cameras to scan the recycling stream for contamination as we tip the container. This provides vital feedback to customers to improve the quality of the materials we collect and helps us advance circularity. AI helps our customer service agents quickly and accurately find needed information across thousands of contracts. We use AI to write software code, expedite approvals for new waste streams, and drive improvements in many other areas across our business. These applications all show promise. They also do not work independently of people and processes. It takes time to get the full system – people, processes and technology – to operate in a way that improves the customer experience, reduces cost and drives profitability. AI has and will continue to enhance our productivity, allowing us to do more with less. However, it will take time to get benefits at scale. More importantly, it is creating new jobs that will allow us to fully capture the benefits of these tools.

AI will be transformative over time, but its near-term impact is often overstated. This not a call to aim low or go slow. AI is already making huge inroads in certain industries and will enable new competitors. The internet is a good comparison to understand how AI could unfold. While the dot-com boom ended in a short-term bust, that was not the end of the story. All the fiber laid at that time created the foundation that enabled the internet to transform business across a range of sectors. The internet’s full potential took years to capture as people, processes and technology all worked together to create new businesses and new business models. The internet has made us more efficient and eliminated millions of transactional jobs. It has also spurred new businesses and created millions of other jobs. So, if you are reading all the AI headlines and feeling afraid or left out, do not lose hope. Embrace the technology, assess the opportunities and risks, and most importantly, stay patient. We are playing a long game.