AI is already a reality in our everyday lives. Siri and Alexa have completely transformed the way we communicate, while self driving vehicles, smart homes and chatbots are impacting and improving everything from supply chains to customer service to transportation. To dismiss AI as simply a way to automate mundane, repetitive tasks would be to sell the technology short, not to mention severely underestimating its impact on humans and the future of the workplace.
Humans and AI are already irrevocably intertwined and will be even more so moving forward, based on the pace of innovation. According to Accenture Research, human and machine collaboration is significantly impacting productivity, and is set to directly increase revenues by 38 percent by 2022. Business leaders are on board with the pace of change, with at least 61 percent agreeing that human and machine collaboration will help them reach their goals faster and more efficiently.
Accenture believes AI will have a direct impact on business processes, creating new roles for humans rather than merely replacing them. On the industrial and manufacturing fronts, AI offers flexibility and facilitates smart, individualized production that is in line with real-time customer choices and preferences. The automotive industry is a prime application for AI, enabling buyers to customize their vehicles at the dealership and have their automobiles built to their specifications, in real time.
Along those lines, AI is a great choice for creating personalized, individual services and experiences. From multimedia to customer service, AI can improve the user experience and is also a huge asset for sales and marketing. AI can also speed up processes and services, which is useful in applications from manufacturing to human resources and recruiting. Accenture referenced a recent case where Unilever adopted an AI-based hiring system to assess the body language and personality traits of its candidates. The solution helped the company broaden its recruiting efforts, with the number of job applicants doubling to reach 30,000. And yet the average time to reach a hiring decision decreased from four months to four weeks, creating massive efficiencies and cost savings for the company.
Decision making is another important way AI and humans can work together. AI has the ability to mine giant amounts of data quickly and efficiently and feed the results to humans in real time. That makes the technology particularly useful for applications in manufacturing, customer service and healthcare. And of course, AI has the benefit of speed, which is critical in most industries. Accenture points out that finance company HSBC Holdings used an AI-based solution to improve both speed and accuracy in fraud detection, enabling the company to monitor millions of transactions each day to look for fraud.
Despite its myriad benefits, AI cannot work successfully on a broad scale without human collaboration. The technology is already opening up new markets and workplace roles, and has the potential to create even more jobs moving forward. AI will certainly impact the future of work and human roles in the workplace, augmenting and aiding human workers and elevating them to new and more challenging roles in their work environments.
To learn more about how AI and machine learning are changing the workforce and creating new and expanded roles for human workers, TMC is hosting a Future of Work Expo in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The event, which will take place from February 12-14, 2020, will explore how AI and machine learning may be used to improve business communications, collaboration, sales and marketing and contact centers and customer service.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
