The importance of AI in the workplace is becoming more and more important, in-fact even this article idea is suggested to me by Chatgpt. I personally see a lot of people do not really understand the impact of AI on the future work life. I remember the days when my family was mentioning me over and over again how important it will be to speak English when I was 10 years old. After starting working in a multinational company and moving away from Turkey, I now understand what they really meant 20 years ago and now I feel the same thing for AI.
In 2043 AI will be a very fundamental part of work life, that’s why I decided to sit down and write about this Chatgpt suggested topic in a simple way, here is what I gather while searching about it.
1. The Rise of Automation
Maybe the very first impact of AI will be around automation. Consider how many repetitive tasks we are doing in work life every single day. According to one of the Mckinsey reports, almost half of the tasks can be automated. This is huge. Obviously, it’s all about cutting costs, if we can streamline processes and enhance the efficiency of course we should automate it. I assume some people already start worrying about AI replacing their position but I don’t see that way. Obviously, some of the position will get lost, but do you remember that guy in the elevators who were pushing the button back in the early 90s, with elevator automation that job got lost, but there will be new opportunities too. Let’s focus on the positive side.
2. The Impact on Jobs
Just like every other disruptive technologies, AI will also automate some of the professional positions. Autonomous vehicles, customer services, grocery store check-outs etc… Especially with the improvement of sensors and integration of these systems with AI and machine learning algorithms things will change. But again, there will be new jobs coming out of this change, and there will be plenty of new opportunities too such as AI trainers, robot maintainers etc… So personally I don’t really worry about this.
3. Upskilling and Reskilling
As AI will change most professions as we know them, I believe people need to learn to adopt their skills even faster now. We all need to bring more to the table, but we can not compete with an AI in terms of quantity, but maybe we can compete with quality. At least until the singularity. But upskilling is not something easy to learn yourself, this is why I strongly believe we need to adjust our education systems to teach our kids to enhance their creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and emotional intelligence, qualities that AI and robots can not easily replicate. Governments will play a critical role here but on a personal level, I would not suggest trusting them so its better to start learning yourself
4. Human-Machine Cooperation Redefined
On a personal level, I do not really afraid of AI. I mean we all watched Terminator and it didn’t end well but still, I believe the future will be about the collaboration of Humans and Machines not Humans vs Machines.AI has the ability to increase human capabilities, by increasing our productivity and improving our decision-making. Ultimately time is the most important commodity and anything that help us to use it more efficiently is a net positive for humanity. We just need to be careful about giving Nuke codes to AI. Not that hard really.
5. The Gig Economy and Remote Work
The governments and companies as we know it will be impacted the most. Because of cryptocurrency and AI technologies, decentralization is becoming more and more inevitable. Most of the companies will have to change to remote work since I think most of the high-level talent will want to have that flexibility. Also considering each single company already started to compete globally, as a CEO you need to access the best talent and they are not necessarily living in your city.
This flexibility will also give people the chance to join to Gig economy more and more. With cryptocurrency technology and the self-sovereignty of your own assets and making a trade without government borders, the Gig economy will probably boom. This will bring more credibility and ethical issues but that is for another article to discuss.
Game Changer Conclusion
We are living in a time probably humanity never lived before, (I’m not going to argue about pre-historic civilizations here). AI is another disruptive innovation that will go next to the fire, writing, wheel, electricity, internet…. Just like they changed a lot AI will too. The only difference is adaptation speed will be much faster and a normal person will probably feel the impact in 20-30 years period. But just like any other disruption the ones that can adapt will survive. So its better to stop worrying and start learning how to adopt.