YES, AI WILL TAKE YOUR JOB...

Before Henry Ford built the Motor Car, Horse Manure was a big nuisance in large sprawling metropolis such as New York and London as horses were the main form of transportation for carting goods and humans. Imagine a city, with tons of foul smelling horse droppings and carcasses left off the road

An estimated 100 million horse trips per year meant tons of horse manure on the street sidewalks, caked on the soles of shoes. When the motor car gained widespread usage and popularity, workers whose job was to shovel horse dung off the roads were relieved because they could find jobs in a new growing automobile industry and not shovel horse dung daily. In their case, the slow death of horse transportation inadvertently meant the exponential growth of the automobile industry.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the trending topic in most business and technology conversations. AI features heavily on business and professional events taking centre stage in professional spaces.

A recently held Women in PR Ghana conference had AI as the major topic with the theme “Empowering Practitioners for an AI & ESG Future“ ?

Ghana Journalists Association also held their 75th anniversary and had a seminar dedicated to AI. They went with the theme “75 years of excellence in journalism: honouring the past, embracing the present and shaping the future," with the sub-theme "AI and the future of Journalism “

Underneath these conversations around AI is a slight tinge of fear and despair with a major question sitting on the chest of most professionals.? The real question here is

Will AI take my job and render me useless?

This is a legit question because new technology always displaces some professionals working with and around the old technology. Motor cars displaced workers shoveling horse manure whiles the Internet displaced millions of professionals in publishing, arts and entertainment, postal services etc.

Just as the internet revolution wiped away many jobs, AI won’t be any different because it will lead to exponential job losses.

Back to the concerns of journalists and Public Relations professionals, yes generative AI has already taken a huge chunk of the work being done by these professionals. Generative AI with its machine learning, improved neural networks and billions units of training data will become a full force in the workplace.

ChatGPT can write an article or press release as good as any PR professional or Journalist. Over 50% of all articles online is already being written by AI and on track to reach 90% by 2025.

AI’s better at generating analytical articles due to its ability to draw inferences, extrapolate data and show similarities or otherwise of trends.

Articles on topics like

• ?Stock Market Analysis,
• Profile of a celebrity and their dating life,
• An analytical article on effect of climate change Amazonian rainforest in Brazil, etc

AI will do a better job of writing than any other journalist due to AI’s ability to sample large data and draw inferences in seconds.

Communications professionals won’t be the only ones affected by AI, jobs in industries such as Healthcare (X-ray technicians and assistants), Insurance (Valuators), Finance (Accounting), Legal (Contract/ drafting work) and stock trading will also be affected.

My job (Recruiting) is also not spared, AI assisted Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) is better at evaluating candidates than me. With just a simple click, ATS is equipped to screen candidates, sort them into ranks and schedule interviews with applicants.

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Hence the fears of these professionals are warranted because AI is already doing the job Concerns about loss of income is understandable. Given the challenges in the global economy where inflation is all the rage across countries and the cost of living crisis, the last problem any professional wants to deal with is some advanced computer model taking away their livelihood.

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What Next?

As a professional in industries affected by AI, our struggle is cut out for us. We have to study AI for what it is and determine how we can ride this new wave of technology to become super professionals