How AI is changing the way we work

The coro­n­avirus cri­sis has giv­en rise to fresh con­cerns about automa­tion in labour mar­kets. With peo­ple locked down and social dis­tanc­ing still in place, many busi­ness­es around the world have scaled up their invest­ment in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). 

AI’s abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy and learn from data pat­terns, and trans­late them into use­ful tech­nolo­gies, has proven to be indis­pens­able for many organ­i­sa­tions, from health­care providers to deliv­ery sub­scrip­tion ser­vices, for exam­ple, in respond­ing to the pan­dem­ic.

Busi­ness appli­ca­tions of AI over the past 12 months have ranged from those designed to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and yield, through to cus­tomer-ser­vice func­tions.

Robots have been rolling in to sani­tise UK and US hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dors and deliv­er cru­cial sup­plies such as blood sam­ples. Cincinnati/Northern Ken­tucky Inter­na­tion­al Air­port has enlist­ed mechan­i­cal floor scrub­ber Neo to whizz around and clean its floors every night, free­ing up staff to make sure high-touch areas of the ter­mi­nal are spot­less. Fol­low­ing its $300-mil­lion acqui­si­tion of so-called deci­sion engine Dynam­ic Yield in 2020, McDonald’s has also got in on the AI action, trailling dri­ve-through sys­tems chaired by smart speak­ers.

Gold­man Sachs, L’Oréal and Proc­ter & Gam­ble are among those that have bet big on less-robot­ic look­ing AI tools to meet the chal­lenges posed by a move away from phys­i­cal con­sumerism to dig­i­tal, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy that pre­dicts people’s finan­cial out­look and “try-before-you-buy” prod­uct-match­ing sys­tems.

How­ev­er, AI’s busi­ness impact will out­last COVID-19. Recent data from Grand View pre­dicts the mar­ket will be worth $390 bil­lion by 2025, mark­ing 46.2 per cent growth since 2019. McK­in­sey is show­ing an appetite to invest in machine learn­ing, with C‑suite lead­ers who are see­ing strong results from AI adop­tion gear­ing up to boost their spend over the next three years and devel­op their own solu­tions in-house.

There are impli­ca­tions for humans, though. Accord­ing to a World Eco­nom­ic Forum fore­cast, in a shift like­ly to wors­en inequal­i­ty, half of all work tasks will be han­dled by machines by 2025. A sep­a­rate report from the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy projects AI could replace as many as two mil­lion more work­ers in man­u­fac­tur­ing alone by 2025.

This shift, cou­pled with an eco­nom­ic down­turn, is paving the way for fresh con­cerns from employ­ees about how many jobs will be lost to automa­tion, espe­cial­ly for those in the ser­vices, elec­tron­ic and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. In the Unit­ed States alone, a lit­tle over a quar­ter (27 per cent) of all work­ers say they are wor­ried the job they have now will be elim­i­nat­ed with­in the next five years as a result of new tech­nol­o­gy, robots or AI.

How­ev­er, AI’s automa­tion effect may well be over­stat­ed. Analy­sis using data from the Euro­pean Cen­tre for the Devel­op­ment of Voca­tion­al Train­ing reveals that, in the Euro­pean Union, the share of jobs fac­ing a very high risk of being auto­mat­ed by new dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies is close to 14 per cent. How­ev­er, what two in five EU jobs do face is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty of “sub­stan­tial trans­for­ma­tion”.

So, while AI might change how humans work, the real­i­ty is it’s unlike­ly to replace most jobs entire­ly. And, although “robo­pho­bia” is on the up, there are sev­er­al exam­ples of how machine learn­ing is already pos­i­tive­ly impact­ing employ­ees across a host of indus­tries.

AI’s role in supporting the workforce

Dr Samer Al Moubayed, chief exec­u­tive at Furhat Robot­ics, a con­ver­sa­tion­al-AI social robot­ics start­up that builds tech designed to inter­act with humans in a nat­ur­al, flu­id way, has over­seen the con­cep­tion of the firm’s name­sake robot that can speak, show emo­tions and main­tain eye con­tact.

The past few years have seen Moubayed work with the likes of human resources com­pa­ny Ten­gai to devel­op a robot that autonomous­ly per­forms job inter­views, scores the inter­view accord­ing to an estab­lished frame­work and sum­maris­es the out­put for a human recruiter.

Furhat Robot­ics is also col­lab­o­rat­ing with Deutsche Bahn to place intu­itive trav­el assis­tants in train sta­tions that can answer ques­tions relat­ed to depar­ture times, delays and more in over 35 lan­guages.

Moubayed is firm in his belief that such AI invest­ments can sup­port humans in their day-to-day jobs, work­ing in har­mo­ny with the work­force instead of against it. Robot­ics, he argues, will open up more job oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“Look­ing at inno­va­tions like Ten­gai, though the solu­tion might reduce the need for recruiters, it won’t remove them from the process entire­ly,” he explains. “It will also increase the need for robot oper­a­tors.”

The same applies to Deutsche Bahn trav­el assis­tants. “Long term, it might lessen the need for hir­ing mul­ti­ple cus­tomer ser­vice agents to cov­er a broad range of lan­guages, but it will require devel­op­ers and trans­la­tors to a high­er extent,” says Moubayed.

The AI expert cau­tions that no one is in a posi­tion to under­stand the last­ing net effect automa­tion will have on the work­force. But, done right, many of the risks asso­ci­at­ed with automa­tion can be mit­i­gat­ed in a sim­i­lar fash­ion to pre­vi­ous indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions, through upskilling staff and also uphold­ing a sense of social wel­fare.

“Busi­ness­es should focus their AI invest­ments on increas­ing the aver­age qual­i­ty of life for work­ers and cus­tomers, rather than sim­ply rely­ing on automa­tion as a tool to cut costs,” he says.

Identifying human gaps, instead of filling them

Mar­ket­ing giant Pub­li­cis Groupe cred­its the use of its inter­nal AI appli­ca­tion Mar­cel for help­ing it save 2,000 jobs dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. As a result, it plans to spend more heav­i­ly on the tool, hav­ing seen an encour­ag­ing impact on its work­force.

The smart intranet works by assign­ing rel­e­vant briefs and projects to Pub­li­cis’ 80,000 staff. As ad execs every­where from Tokyo to Toron­to shift­ed to remote work­ing at the out­set of 2020, Mar­cel host­ed an inter­nal job mobil­i­ty plat­form that allowed peo­ple to change agen­cies, move to dif­fer­ent mar­kets and stretch their skillset. 

Sud­den­ly, as some Pub­li­cis-owned agen­cies and mar­kets found them­selves work­ing hard­er and faster to respond to COVID, oth­ers were expe­ri­enc­ing a slow­down as clients in the hard­est-hit sec­tors, like trav­el, were inca­pac­i­tat­ed. 

Mar­cel enabled those over­stretched agen­cies to post jobs and requests, mak­ing use of tal­ent that had time on their hands. 

Dan Mur­ray, Marcel’s chief exec­u­tive, says as well as automat­ing the mun­dane, the tech is enabling the busi­ness to iden­ti­fy human gaps for things robots can’t do, like think cre­ative­ly or com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly.  

“It’s allowed our staff to focus on things that might take a high­er-lev­el thought process or more cre­ative mind. It’s also opened oppor­tu­ni­ties we might not oth­er­wise have had,” he says.

The busi­ness is now plot­ting a lot more addi­tion­al uses for Marcel’s future, based on AI and machine learn­ing, that will con­nect peo­ple and allow staff to bet­ter flex their cre­ative mus­cle.

Improving the working experience

Tech behe­moth Cis­co is lever­ag­ing AI, machine learn­ing and smart data to enhance the qual­i­ty of remote work­ing for its 75,000 staff, from engi­neers to sales reps.

With 96 per cent of employ­ees cur­rent­ly work­ing away from the office and a hybrid work­ing mod­el here to stay for the long-term, it has been using deep-learn­ing algo­rithms to pow­er an “empa­thet­ic, inclu­sive, secure, work-from-any­where” expe­ri­ence, says senior direc­tor of peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties Gian­pao­lo Barozzi.

Solu­tions include use of intel­li­gent video so peo­ple can move around freely in their work­space and still be avail­able in meet­ings, as well as real-time meet­ing tran­scrip­tion and auto­mat­ed debriefs.

An AI tool, dubbed Peo­ple Insights, is also pro­vid­ing indi­vid­u­als and teams with ana­lyt­ics around per­son­al and col­lec­tive work prac­tices.

“This means staff can make bet­ter use of their time and take care of their peers,” says Barozzi. “The 21st-cen­tu­ry world of work is about con­nect­ing peo­ple to peo­ple, wher­ev­er they are, safe­ly and secure­ly. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is no longer a sole mat­ter of effi­cien­cy, it’s increas­ing­ly achieved through inclu­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion, adapt­abil­i­ty to unfore­seen change and the effec­tive lever­age of col­lec­tive strengths. AI is help­ing our teams in all these regards.”

With most jobs set to involve some form of AI by 2025, he stress­es edu­ca­tion is key to ensur­ing staff are com­fort­able with these types of tech­nolo­gies, rather than fear­ful of them.

Cisco’s stand­ing as a tech firm means its peo­ple are large­ly open to being ear­ly adopters, but his advice to oth­er busi­ness­es is clear. “Fears are real, so first of all we have to treat them with empa­thy. We need to be trans­par­ent and clear about the oppor­tu­ni­ties, while not under­es­ti­mat­ing the risks and chal­lenges,” says Barozzi.

“It’s time to move beyond the paralysing utopia-dystopia dichoto­my: as always the future is ours to shape. Dig­i­tal has already turned from a tool to the envi­ron­ment where our lives hap­pen. Humans and arti­fi­cial agents will increas­ing­ly work togeth­er, enhanc­ing and ampli­fy­ing each other’s capa­bil­i­ties.”