AI is good, AI is bad, AI is this, AI is that. Some love it, others hate it. Some embrace the dawn of productivity; others foresee hell is breaking loose. Nobody knows really, but we’ll see, and, in the meantime, we can make good use of AI by handling it like we’d handle a sharp knife in the kitchen. Even though change is constantly happening around us, we typically don’t like it very much. Some decades ago, robots entered the production shop floor, emails entered offices, and productivity ramped up. Job descriptions changed, the GDP grew, but unemployment rates did not (macro scale). While we multiplied our productivity, GDP and population, unemployment rates were rather stable. What’s the takeaway from that about the next disrupting wave of automation: AI?
AI is performing an incredible learning curve these years, and it is difficult to keep track of its steep progress. And still, it’s just a tool, like our sharp kitchen knife. Comparing a manual process, executed with worn tools, it doesn’t really matter too much, whether we discuss a chef with her knife or an accountant with pen and paper. A better tool kit doesn’t erase the task itself. How we’re getting things done is changing, and some jobs might be changing substantially, but this is only freeing up time, ready to be invested in tasks that only humans can do, if we keep pushing ourselves to embrace the future and the change that it requires.
The movie Idiocracy shows a future scenario in which humans lay back and take it easy a bit too much. Striving for growth, innovation and positive change, however, require new, better, sharper tools. AI is one of such, available now. These LLMs are not doing the job for us, they help us to do it faster, better, and cheaper. If we don’t learn how to leverage AI for our company and for ourselves, we’ll miss the inherent value behind the face value. Example: An email is not just a digital letter; it can be a complex and super-fast communication channel for one-to-many knowledge exchange. Chatbots are not giving us simple solutions to our complex problems, they help us to better understand the problems and research solution whole spaces. Moving the world’s documented knowledge directly to our fingertips. AI empowered workflows can take over repetitive tasks that have economic value below minimum wage.
On a macro scale, I disagree with all hypotheses that claim AI is going to cut jobs without creating new ones in the mid- to long-term. On a micro scale, I agree with the hypothesis that we all must adapt to change, and AI is changing a lot. The steam engine, trains, automobiles, electricity, internet, mobile phones, smart phones… now AI, are revolutions that create value. How many of them happened before you grew up, how many after your first job. To how many of them did you first say no and adapted later? What are your personal learnings from your own experience with new technologies, maybe having been a late adopter before?