If you’ve been paying attention to the news about artificial intelligence, you’ve probably read some big headlines. The idea that AI is going to take over our jobs and our lives has been omnipresent lately. Experts fear this, companies worry about that: when AI is mentioned, it often has a negative ring. Are news media right to worry?
No, of course not; these headlines are a waste of precious time. Instead of discussing what AI could do to us, we should talk about what AI could do for us. Because the point of artificial intelligence tools is, and will always be, to make our jobs and lives easier, not take over. If we play it right, AI will work for us and with us, not against us. The technology gives us an abundance of opportunities. For example, it helps us:
- Increase efficiency
- Improve quality
- Create safer (work) environments
- Concentrate on what we are best at (understanding emotions, people management, etc.)
- Have more time to connect on a deeper level with customers, patients, employees…
Look beyond the short term
Still, we have to call a spade a spade: AI is going to impact the job market. In the short term, certain jobs will need to be redefined. The clue is to look beyond that, into the future. Remember when computers became “a thing”? It changed jobs, just like many other technological evolutions have done (think Henry Ford’s moving assembly line). But it also created new careers and endless opportunities for existing professions.
AI will follow the same course. Feared now, but welcomed in the long run. We will use it daily; it’ll be all around us, and we won’t even give it a second thought. It won’t take over our world Terminator-style, it’ll only make things easier in the same way computers make things easier.
Be flexible, be ready
As humans, we don’t like change. We don’t like the unknown. And AI happens to have a lot of unknowns. But it’s up to us to be flexible and, with good change management, be ready to share the workplace with AI. We have to let AI tools support us in our work. Only then can we unlock the power of artificial intelligence and use it for our benefit.