While Artificial Intelligence offers great opportunity for businesses, a prominent concern coming out of the AI revolution surrounds the workforce. There are worries that further developments and implementation of AI will leave many employees without jobs as their roles become increasingly automated. This was highlighted in a recent report from PwC, which found that over 10 million UK workers could be replaced by robots within 15 years, as routine tasks and jobs are affected by automation.
This fear is not unfounded, the technology’s capability to automate predictable, non-personal tasks is likely to result in certain roles in some businesses becoming fully automated. However, AI also provides a huge opportunity for organizations – and their workforce – going forward.
AI is already transforming businesses, enabling them to take advantage and gain competitive insight from the vast amounts of data available to them. Formula 1 teams are analyzing data for improvements that could give them an edge over competitors, while councils have customer service bots to deal with the extensive queries they receive, reducing both costs and customer waiting times.
Because of its increasing capabilities, it’s likely that jobs such as those in call centres, routine machine operation, and stock taking will soon no longer be carried out solely by humans. This will result in industries such as manufacturing undergoing further evolution, particularly at the lower skilled end. We will also see AI play a role in automating information gathering and report writing in the professional service industries – e.g. legal, accountancy, finance and insurance.