The Great Debate: AI
The Rise Of AI In The Workplace
I'm always on the lookout for new and innovative ideas that can help business leaders and entrepreneurs stay ahead of the curve. And one trend that's been catching my eye lately is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace.
AI is expected to reach expert level in twelve months. Already, Microsoft is integrating AI into its platform such as Power Automate, BI, and ChatGPT.
AI has come a long way in recent years, and we're now seeing it being used in a variety of industries, from healthcare and finance to manufacturing and logistics. But what exactly is AI, and how can it benefit your business?
At its core, AI refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. This can range from simple tasks like data entry and analysis to more complex processes like image and speech recognition.
I am not talking about the basic automation that we are accustomed to. AI is a capability that solves problems and works on questions that you may not even be aware of. We are talking about a capability that will make itself better without human intervention.
So why should you care about AI? For one, it can help you streamline your business processes and increase efficiency. By automating repetitive tasks, solving problems, and handling data analysis, AI can free up your employees to focus on more creative and strategic tasks.
Most likely, human roles will transition from labor intensive processes to finishing the last mile of a project and communicating options and outcomes to other humans.
AI can also help you make better decisions by providing insights and recommendations based on data analysis. For example, an AI-powered algorithm can analyze customer behavior and provide personalized recommendations for products or services that they may be interested in.
But perhaps most importantly, AI can help you stay ahead of the competition by providing a competitive edge. By using AI to optimize your operations and gain insights into market trends, you can make smarter decisions and respond more quickly to changing market conditions.
Of course, implementing AI in your business isn't always easy. It requires significant investment in technology, as well as the expertise to build and maintain AI systems. But with the right strategy and approach, many businesses can benefit from AI.
So, if you're looking to take your business to the next level, I encourage you to create AI Curiosity Teams. Have each team independently explore how AI is being used. Make sure that they explore use across industries and across functions. The teams shall identify specific ways to make your products/services and operations even better. Ensure that the teams work on a recurring basis because staying ahead of the curve will not be a one-time event. Introduce different team members into the team to keep it fresh.
Don’t be limited. Don’t accept status quo, comfort zone thinking.
Artificial intelligence early adopters in the workplace are profiting
The debut of ChatGPT has sparked new fears that artificial intelligence will replace the work that people do much sooner than anyone thought, making workers redundant or even making entire job functions obsolete. Why pay a human to do something that an algorithm could do for free?
Workers who are already using AI for their jobs provide an impressive counterpoint to this narrative, because they are, in short, thriving. They are more likely to have received recent salary increases that have outpaced inflation, to consider themselves very well paid, to say they have opportunities to advance their careers, and to say morale at their company is high. For these early AI adopters, AI is a boon to their careers rather than a threat.
According to the latest CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce Survey, workers who say they rely on AI for their jobs have a Workforce Happiness Index of 78, seven points higher than among those who don’t use AI at all at their jobs (71).
That difference between the early AI adopters and the holdouts is larger than the differences we see in workforce happiness by race (at most a one point difference), education (at most a three point difference), or whether someone works fully in-person or fully remotely or something in-between (at most a two point difference).
This Workforce Happiness Index calculates a score for every survey respondent in our CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce Survey, with a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 0. Over the 10 surveys we have fielded since April 2019, the overall index score has varied shockingly little, with scores only ranging from 71 to 73 in each wave. These latest data from the May 2023 survey was fielded among nearly 9,000 workers in the U.S. from May 23-31.
On every measure that comprises our Workforce Happiness Index — including pay, autonomy, opportunities to advance, recognition for their work, and meaningfulness — workers who use AI for their jobs report satisfaction that is greater than or equal to their peers. For example, 38% of workers who say using AI is necessary for them at work also say they are very well paid, compared with 24% among those who don’t use AI at all at their job. Similarly, 44% of workers who use AI for their jobs say they have excellent opportunities to advance their careers at their company, compared with just 24% among those who do not use AI at work.
AI, salary gains and inflation
Aside from those core components of happiness at work, the divide between AI-enabled workers and luddites shows up in other ways. Compared with those who don’t use AI at all, workers who say using AI is necessary to do their job are more likely to say their salary has increased more than inflation in the past year (33% vs. 10%) and to rate morale at their workplace as excellent (50% vs. 27%).
Why might that be? Over the past few years, inflation has increased exponentially, and a common complaint among workers is that their salaries have not kept pace. A large part of the appeal of the Great Resignation was that workers could leave their low-paying job for a similar job that would pay them a (significantly higher) market rate salary elsewhere.
In our latest Workforce Survey, 65% of workers say that inflation has increased more than their salary has increased in the past 12 months, while 21% say their salary and inflation have risen in tandem and just 12% say their salary has increased more than inflation. Workers who rely on AI to do their jobs are three times as likely as those who do not use AI for work to fall into that lucky last category, but it might not just be by luck.
Early adopters of AI in the workplace are a more diverse bunch than you might expect. The group of workers who say AI is required to do their job tend to be younger than workers on average (42% are under age 35, compared with 34% of workers overall). But, they are less likely to be white (39%, compared with 63% of workers overall) and no more likely than other workers to have incomes in the six figures.
They are more highly concentrated in some industries than others. More than one in five workers (21%) in advertising & marketing say “using AI is necessary to do my job,” making it the field with the highest percentage of its workers who are already incorporating AI into their day-to-day jobs. Following closely behind, 18% of workers in business support & logistics, 15% of workers in agriculture, 14% of workers in hospitality and tourism, 12% of workers in the automotive industry, and 12% of workers in technology say AI is required for them to do their job.
Still, even if more satisfied in jobs now, the data suggests early adoption of AI can lead to a higher level of fear about the future. About half of workers in advertising & marketing and business support and logistics (46%) are worried AI will soon take their job – twice the level of concern overall.
Noteworthy, though, is that technology and advertising & marketing are the fields with the fewest workers who say they don’t use AI at all (42% and 33%, respectively), indicating that most tech workers are making use of AI by choice rather than requirement.
That might be a key reason these early adopters are thriving – they are doing so as much by choice as by necessity. Their early use of AI might have shown them how much more productive and successful they can be by relying on these new tools, and they simply have no choice but to embrace that future.
How generative AI is already changing the workplace: Oracle just added it to HR software
"Nothing is certain," Benjamin Franklin once said, "except death and taxes." With unwavering certainty, I can say that artificial intelligence will be entrenched in our future work lives -- it's only a matter of who embraces it and how. Oracle, for one, is embracing it.
The company is adding generative AI capabilities to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) system, supported by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. According to Oracle, the new generative AI-powered features will bring improved job posting, search, and hiring processes for HR professionals and job applicants alike.
"Generative AI is the future of workplace technology with untapped potential to transform HR processes," said Kim Kohlman, vice president of HCM Operations at Hearst, an Oracle customer. "We anticipate that these improvements with generative AI will allow our teams to focus their efforts on increasing productivity and driving meaningful business value."
Oracle adds that the generative AI capabilities will help HR employees generate customized text for job descriptions specific to the position and company, write requirements for job postings, summarize employee performance data from peers and managers for reviews, and generate suggestions tailored to the company culture.
"With the ability to summarize, author, and recommend content, generative AI helps to reduce friction as employees complete important HR functions," said Chris Leone, executive vice president of applications development at Oracle Cloud HCM.
"For example, with the new embedded generative AI capabilities in Oracle Cloud HCM, our customers will be able to take advantage of large language models to drastically reduce the time required to complete tasks, improve the employee experience, enhance the accuracy of workforce insights, and ultimately increase business value," Leone added.
Oracle is incorporating generative AI into HCM to bolster its existing AI capabilities; it is unclear whether the feature could come to replace any HR employees at some point. However, the company didn't make any statements regarding that question.
Will workers be paid differently in the age of AI?
Artificial intelligence is already finding its way into daily workflows for many employees, and necessitating others to think about the AI skills they’ll need to keep their jobs secure when companies embrace the technology.
AI may chip away at some of the most rote types of work, but experts have been clear AI won’t steal all our jobs. Most likely, they say, employees will work in concert with machines, and workers’ roles may become more sophisticated as AI eliminates repetitive and manual tasks. Ideally, employees will instead spend their time focusing on the uniquely human tasks that AI isn’t currently positioned to usurp – i.e. creative approaches to problem solving, interpersonal communication – and be able to generate more, better output.
If workers transition into more intellectually demanding roles, or see their productivity spike when they harness AI’s benefits, it’s tempting to believe wages will evolve in parallel. After all, if job descriptions are changing, and workers are contributing more, compensation should theoretically follow.
However, experts say the outlook may be more complicated for workers of all skill levels.
As AI takes some of the mundane tasks out of workers’ days, particularly in knowledge-work roles, experts expect many jobs may become more sophisticated and creative. Productivity could spike, too, as workers transition time-consuming minutiae to machines. For some employees, this means their fundamental job descriptions are changing – and that they’re producing more output at a higher level.
Although it’s possible some companies will raise pay as employees take on new tasks, some experts, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economics professor Daron Acemoglu, are dubious all workers will see pay rises as AI pushes them to do more, different work.
In a 2019 research paper with colleague Pascual Restrepo, Acemoglu wrote that we “should not expect automation to create wage increases commensurate with productivity growth”. One reason, he believes, is that financial gains realised from increased worker productivity are generally absorbed by the company, not passed onto the workers as better compensation.
Harry J Holzer, economist and Georgetown University professor of public policy, and non-resident fellow at US think-tank The Brookings Institution, says this chimes with research that shows AI shifts compensation from the worker to the business. According to an economic study by the White House Council of Economic Advisors of automation in blue-collar jobs, Germany, France, Spain and The Netherlands saw revenue from productivity gains go to shareholders and not to the salaries of warehouse workers.
For hourly and shift-based workers, often in low-skill industries, AI has the potential to limit earning potential. Experts say one concern is workers may end up working less, as some parts of their jobs become automated.
Acemoglu beieves even though current automation technology may not match the quality of human work, companies will increasingly accept what he calls “so-so automation” in lieu of paying labourers – even if their wages are not substantial. He also warns this could become more of a problem as the technology gets increasingly advanced.
And across all labour of all skill levels, increased worker monitoring may affect pay. Veena Dubal, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, says many companies are already using AI to measure productivity, and subsequently determine wages.
Even though current automation technology may not match the quality of human work, companies will increasingly accept “so-so automation” in lieu of paying labourers – even if their wages are not substantial
Her research shows these evaluations lead to lower wages and inequality among worker earnings, which she calls “algorithmic wage discrimination – where individual workers make vastly different amounts based on an AI evaluation that the worker themselves doesn't understand”. She believes if companies invest heavily in productivity-tracking technologies, the problem could get worse.
There may be one group, however, that does stand to see their pay rise amid widespread AI integration.
Workers at top ranks, says Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director for the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, may be more protected from wage fluctuation – especially if they facilitate and decide the processes by which AI is used in their workplaces. For instance, there may be “higher pay for some of those who are managing all of this [AI transformation] or doing the most sophisticated work supported by these tools”.
Levelling the playing field?
The conversation around AI and salary isn’t just a question of whether wages will rise, stagnate or fall, however. Some experts argue that the rise of workplace AI could help close the wage inequality gap between high- and low-skilled workers, across many demographic groups.
David Autor, professor in economics at MIT, argues AI may be able to lower the barrier to entry for highly skilled positions by eliminating the need for a traditional, elite higher education usually required for a top role. With AI, a wide variety of workers can gain specialised expertise faster and more widely – in a sense, roles that were once gatekept may be increasingly less so.
“AI could create a scenario that reduces the scarcity of high-level expertise,” says Autor. As more workers from a variety of backgrounds work with AI to quickly gain the high-level skills usually reserved for specialised experts with elite backgrounds, “it would open the door for non-traditional candidates, particular those without a four-year degree”.
He continues: “If the demand for highly specialised knowledge remains elastic” – for instance, in industries such as engineering, medicine, computer science and law – “that would mean more jobs for non-traditional candidates who, assisted by AI, would be able work at a high level of expertise. It could level the playing field.”
In this scenario, it’s possible the experts who were once scarce might see a dip in their wages as they see more competition in the labour market. However, it may be more likely that across industries, more workers – and a more diverse pool at that – would receive a higher salary than they might currently be making in lower skilled jobs that don’t require a college degree.
Organisation and advocation
Muro says this may be a challenging period for every worker, as the technology is still developing.
MIT’s Acemoglu emphasises the outcomes for debates around worker pay and other AI-related workplace issues will largely depend on who is making the decisions about how the technology is developed and deployed, and what subsequent worker protections may follow.
Workers may have a part to play, says Dubal.
To help drive these decisions in a human-favourable direction, she suggests workplace organisation and policy advocation may help workers keep compensation stable and protect their earning potential. For instance, if workers can “sit at the table with their employers and regulators”, they can help companies understand the intrinsic value of human labour. She points to European workers advocating “for laws that limit the use of AI in certain contexts, like the AI act that's being developed”.
For now, it’s not clear which type of labourers will find their pay most affected by AI – after all, some experts have said highly skilled workers are just as vulnerable to automation as their lower-skilled counterparts. But, says Muro, “nobody gets off scot-free here”.