“Amid the AI fever, it is worth remembering that this technology (like technologies that came before it) is nothing without humans to instruct it,” says Lenovo’s Massimo Chiriatti.
Historic tech transformations should reassure us that AI won't steal our jobs.
"Instead, man and machine work best together."
Check out his exclusive UNLEASH OpEd to find out more.
The past year has seen many discussions about AI ‘taking human jobs’ – but is this fear misplaced?
Our own research shows that workers are broadly optimistic about the role of AI in the workplace, and see a role for the technology as a co-worker rather than a replacement for human beings.
Most employees (87%) already feel that artificial intelligence has a positive role to play in their day-to-day working lives, helping them to stay productive, and eight in ten (81%) prefer to use a mixture of AI and human interaction to solve problems.
Just like previous generations of technological tools, AI is something which augments, rather than replaces, the human worker.
AI will increasingly work alongside human workers, boosting their capabilities according to industry analysts.
Gabriela Vogel, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner shared: “Machines are evolving from being our tools to becoming our teammates.
“Gartner predicts that by 2025, GenAI will be a workforce partner for 90% of companies worldwide.”
A glance at the history of technological revolutions should reassure us.
The arrival of accounting software such as Microsoft Excel in the 1980s sparked fears of mass job losses, but in fact saw a 1.1 million rise in higher-value, better-paid jobs such as management analysts, financial managers and auditors between 1987 and 2000, and a smaller decline in lower-paid roles such as accounting clerks, according to Morgan Stanley.
In separate research, MIT Professor David Autor found that two-thirds of us now work in occupations that did not exist in 1940.
Artificial neural networks mimic the functioning of the human brain, and recent innovations such as automated machine learning (AutoML) will drive the technology even further.
But it’s crucial to remember that these systems are not human brains, and cannot function without the information we feed them.
Instead, man and machine work best together.
AI can be harnessed to improve the performance of IT departments, boosting the whole business, with humans working in step alongside tireless AI systems who are more than happy to resolve an issue at 2am, while human workers sleep.
Our research shows that 91% of employees believe they would be more productive if IT issues were resolved quickly, and a shocking 74% saying that poor IT support has reduced their motivation.
For business leaders hoping to drive productivity, AI-assisted processes hold out the promise to free up large amounts of employee time, with AI working in step with human employees to resolve issues automatically.
For human workers in the IT department, this frees up time for them to concentrate on thornier issues where they can truly deliver value to the business.
AI can also enable predictive maintenance, spotting patterns so that human IT workers can be dispatched to deal with problems before they occur.
With IT environments becoming more complex with each passing year, thanks to the adoption of cloud services and emerging technologies such as the metaverse, AI will be a crucial crutch for overworked IT teams, and a productivity driver for the business as a whole.
Such human-anchored AI systems can not only help organizations simplify their day-to-day operations, they can also help to navigate the pain points of a digital transformation process.
AI is often seen as a force which can solve the same problems humans can, and thus must inevitably displace humans.
This is a false idea of the capabilities of the technology, which is limited by the information humans feed to it, and the tasks humans assign to it.
In the real world, AI commonly empowers humans to interact more efficiently, sometimes in ways that would be barely imaginable even a decade ago.
To take one example, AI software is enabling deaf or hard of hearing people in Brazil to communicate easily with other people, even when they don’t share a language.
An AI engine can create real-time text and voice translation of Libras, the official Brazilian sign language, ‘understanding’ complex physical gestures and turning them into text or voice in real-time.
Powered either by cloud or by edge servers (so that the computation occurs near where people are talking) the technology holds the promise to allow people who are deaf or hard of hearing to communicate in spaces where a sign language interpreter may be unavailable (such as workplaces, shops or hospitals).
Rather than being a technology which takes the place of human beings, AI enables human interactions, working to drive human goals.
Innovations such as AutoML hold the promise of accelerating progress even beyond the dizzying pace of AI innovation we are experiencing now, but humans will remain central to the safe use and efficient operation of AI.
AutoML automates the time-consuming aspects of developing machine-learning models, removing the need for much of the human effort.
Crucially, it also means that business users without expertise in machine learning can train effective machine learning models themselves.
But even at this highly automated frontier of AI technology, human expertise will still be essential.
AutoML automates the process of selecting and tuning algorithms, automating tasks including model selection tasks, which usually require input from experts.
But research published in the 2021 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems found that even as AutoML improves, human oversight will still be essential to ensure the safe and efficient operation of such systems.
AI is rightly hailed as a transformative force that has the potential to change industries from finance to healthcare, boosting the world economy to new and dizzying heights.
But amid the AI fever, it is worth remembering that this technology (like technologies that came before it) is nothing without humans to instruct it.
It is a co-worker, a highly capable one, but not a replacement for human beings.
While AI holds the potential to transform the daily working lives of millions, and the potential to grow more ‘human-like’ in its insight, it’s no replacement for a real, live human mind.
The successful businesses of the future will be those in which human and AI co-worker march hand in hand.
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Chief Technology & Innovation Officer
Chiriatti joined Lenovo as the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer in 2021.
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