Globally, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) has been soaring, and the benefit and drawbacks of AI in the workplace are being discussed in each industry. The AI sector is helping organizations thrive each day with its optimization features, algorithms, and predictive capabilities (West, 2018). Furthermore, due to AI’s learning capabilities, planning, problem-solving, speech recognition, knowledge, and perception, any industry can get the optimum benefit from it. This article will articulate how AI will affect the job market and employment, develop the business, challenges, and problems the AI in business, and affected the area of work and the way to resolve the confrontation.
Artificial intelligence will change the future of work, however, the impact of it will vary by the nature of the organization, region, and the type of industry. One of the affected areas of AI in the work is automation, which will lead the increased levels of productivity. Davenport & Ronanki (2018) did a survey and found that out of 152 projects studied, the most common type of AI was with the automation of digital and physical tasks – such as back-office administrative and financial activities—by using the robotic process automation technologies (RPA). It is a very advanced technology because “robots” get information from various sources and sensors, process that information, and act as a human. Some examples of the work that can be performed are it gets the information from email, phone call, or other sources and updating the customer information, reaching to multiple sources, and getting the expected results—such as background check of the customer by collecting the information from all possible sources, reconciliation of the transaction or charges, and analyzing the contract among various parties and decide whether or not the contract is beneficial to the organization. Therefore, the implementation of AI in the workplace is the least expensive and easiest to implement of the cognitive technologies, which has a high return on investment (ROI).
In terms of increasing productivity, AI certainly increases the volume of production as it allows machines to operate 24 hours a day without interruption. AI is a combination of algorithm, agent, sensors, and actuators, which is connected to the machines, and make a decision based on the environment. A robot can be operated in the machinery parts which works precisely what was instructed by the coding, and information received from sensors (Raj & Seamans 2018). For example, an automatic robot in production/assembly machines can pick the heavy parts which humans cannot do, and assemble them and it will have a very rear chance to default.
AI and Business Development
As it was discussed in an earlier section, AI is working and thinking in the same way as humans do. Therefore, AI helps businesses to develop their business, and make it successful in various ways. Creativity and problem solving are the major traits that mankind have and been together forever. As far as business is concerned, AI helps businesses in designing, planning, and managing with its creativity (Tanveer et al., 2019), which is an essential part of business development.
A simple example of business development with design is Facebook, which is a dominant social media. With Facebook, people can share their thought with like-minded people, connect in the group, discuss contemporary issues with the public, and many more. With the connection among people, Facebook uses AI tools that analyze the member’s behavior and try to find their preferences. Based on those preferences, it provides the advertisement to the targeted audience, which might be helpful for both, users and the advertisement providers. Analyzing the individual preferences of millions of users would not be possible if there was no AI system. Similarly, Netflix has already used an AI system to translate artwork personalization that allows users to find their preferred movies and TV serials easily. To do so, AI has helped Netflix to identify the content of movie and TV series and match it with the user’s preferences and displays the result on the screen.
A business will be successful if all the departments can work together to achieve a common goal. Those departments are like wheels where one wheel is flat, then the vehicle cannot go forward. Therefore, the success is coming from how well all those departments are working, and the individual department successes will be accumulated and contributed to the overall success of the business. From that perspective, AI helps that department to achieve its goal more efficiently and promptly. It can create a new business model to organize teams among different departments which can get a better result. It also helps business leaders monitor budget vs expense, tasks, and relatable data and it reduces the chances of error as compared to a human performing the same task. AI helps businesses be aware of upcoming risks and dangers by alerting them to performance changes, deadlines, and solutions. It also allows businesses to predict as they can use the data to make patterns of certain things that can be harmful to the business, possible risks associated with it, and the benefits as well. Furthermore, AI can help business track tasks, assign them to the best staff, and make sure it is completed on time.
Challenges and Problems
Despite the value, AI can bring on to the table, there are some challenges and problems that can bring to the company and its employee. In my opinion, there are two major challenges on the employee and organization’s side. Those are, the employee who is always afraid of losing their job due to AI, which results in resistance to AI being faced by organizations.
As per its optimization feature, the fear of AI and its effect on employee experience is concerns about losing their job and changes in the working process with advanced technologies. To a certain degree, employees' fear is true because AI can work faster, and more precisely with a minimum amount of error. Therefore, it has high profitability as compared to a human work. Furthermore, organizations do not have to deal with human-related issues, for example, sick leave, employee family issues, vacations, which decrease efficiency and productivity. Also, there is always a chance that the company missed the deadline when work is being done by the employee. On the other hand, with AI there are no human-related issues except repair and maintenance, validation of the algorithm and some other aspects. So, the company is likely to replace the human for repeating and laborious work. However, in my view, there are many work sectors that AI cannot take over, at least for now.
Another challenge of AI in the workplace is, companies will face resistance to AI being implemented in the organization. As it was discussed earlier, employees will face the fear of losing their job due to AI, so they can protest or do something that resists organizations to implement AI. It is common where employees to think that AI was introduced as a measure to eliminate the need for human labor. One example of this is Uber, which has been investing one billion dollars in self-driving cars (Bosa, 2019). Furthermore, people are resisting change because they need extra time and effort to get comfortable with the new advanced technologies. People tend to use new technologies with their existing and comfortable skills. Therefore, organizations need to be strict while implementing AI in the workplace.
Effect of AI in my workplace
I have been working as a senior material and supply planner at West Coast Quartz Corporation (WCQ), where I am responsible to plan and purchase all the raw materials and supplying related products to the company so that the company is functioning without interruption. My company has not implemented an AI-related instrument as of now in my workplace, however, I can assume that there will be more benefits of AI rather than a drawback. One of the responsibilities that I have now is to collect information from different vendors and evaluate the price, contract terms, payment terms, quality of the materials, average lead time, post-delivery service, and other supply chain-related information and decide which vendor to select based on those variables. The ultimate goal is getting quality materials a time cheapest price along with their service, where I am experiencing that getting the optimum result by evaluating hundreds of vendors is almost impossible. Therefore, I am collecting the information from at least 3 to 5 vendors and making a decision. However, if we install AI-related software we can provide our criteria, and instruct it well with sophisticated coding, it can bring the result instantly even after evaluating the hundreds of vendors on the Internet. This reduces the communication gap between the vendor and me, saves tons of time to make a decision, and I can make a more informed decision.
Furthermore, in terms of the planning aspect, the AI software can help me to get the average uses per month, and average lead time per vendor with the specific product. It also helps to evaluate the future sales forecast with the customer, which helps me to plan the purchasing on time. Therefore, AI certainly will help me to work more smoothly in my workplace.
References
Bosa, D. (2019, April 18). Uber announces $1 billion investment into its self-driving car group, weeks before going public. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/uber-nabs-1-billion-self-driving-car-investment-from-softbank-others.html
0 Comments