There’s no doubt that the advent of broadly-available
Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers businesses the prospect of increased
productivity and accelerated innovation, whilst also enabling society to help
solve some of its toughest - and most persistent – challenges: disease, famine,
climate control and natural disasters.
AI is already delivering tangible economic benefits
for many organisations across Asia Pacific. For
example, leading global container shipping company OOCL reports that applying AI
to their business is already saving them $10m annually,
whilst Apollo Hospitals in India are using AI to help predict heart
disease amongst its patients.
While the benefits of Artificial
Intelligence are
undeniable, AI is a
disrupter, especially when it comes to the displacement of jobs. The
ramifications of AI on the workforce is a regular topic of discussion among CEOs and
government leaders across Asia Pacific.
That said, it is also
pertinent to examine the far-reaching implication that AI brings to the
workforce. Will the social
disruptions that AI can potentially create ultimately overshadow its benefits?
The Evolution of Jobs in
the AI-Shaped Future
To put things in perspective:
large-scale disruption is a challenge with every industrial revolution. Technology
will always have
profound implications on the creation, elimination, or evolution of jobs. For example, just a few
years ago, it was
common for offices to have a pool of typists. Clearly, this role is no longer
relevant in today’s modern office, thanks to the proliferation of personal
computing. The advent of AI will reshape jobs in a similar way.
Microsoft recently
partnered with the leading technology advisory firm IDC to assess the digital
transformation landscape across the region. Titled “Unlocking the Economic Impact of Digital
Transformation in Asia Pacific”, the study surveyed 1,560
business and IT leaders from 15 Asia Pacific economies[i].
It showed
that 85% of jobs in Asia Pacific will be transformed in the next three years. (See chart below)
Diving deeper into the results, the
respondents said that over 50% of jobs will be redeployed to a new position
and/or retrained and upskilled for digital transformation. What’s interesting
is that the Study shows that 26% of
jobs will be newly created roles from digital transformation, which will
offset the 27% of jobs that will
he outsourced or automated. In other
words, the overall workforce effect will be broadly neutral.
These are clear indications that how
businesses organize work, how people find employment and the skills people need
to prepare for the workforce are changing dramatically. These changes are
likely to accelerate in the decade ahead.
As AI continues to transform the nature of
work, education, skills, and
training will have to transform as well in order to ensure that people are prepared for the jobs of the
future and businesses have access to the talent they need to succeed. And as
traditional models of employment transform, there will be a need to modernize legal frameworks to recognize new ways of working, provide
adequate worker protections, and
maintain social safety nets.
Building a Better Future Together
The recently published, ‘The
Future Computed, Artificial Intelligence and its Role in Society’, makes sense of this AI
conundrum as it offers three
conclusions on AI and the impact on work and jobs:.
(You can download the book here for free
today).
First, the
organizations and countries that will fare best in the AI race will be early
adopters. The reason is straightforward: AI will be useful wherever
intelligence is needed and it helps us to be more productive in nearly every
field of human endeavor, which can lead to economic growth. Put simply, new
jobs and economic progress will favor those that embrace the technology, not
those that resist it.
Second, while AI
will help improve daily life in many ways and help solve big societal problems,
its important to remain critical when examining the issues that it can bring. Beyond AI deployment,
what’s equally important is to prepare society and the workforce for the impending changes that AI will
catalyze by addressing the need for strong ethical principles, the evolution of
laws, the importance of training for new skills, and even labor market reforms.
These aspects must all come together in order to make the most of this new technology.
Third, to fully
realize the benefits of AI, and to minimize the negative outcomes, technology
companies, private and public organizations need to come together with a sense
of shared responsibility -- AI must be democratized.
The AI building blocks that Microsoft is developing
today, such as computer vision, speech, and knowledge recognition, should be
made available to all so that they can create their own AI-based solutions. AI
should not be controlled by just a few organizations. The AI future should be built by everyone with a vision on
how AI can benefit economies and societies as well as how we can tackle AI
issues and their implications.
The
future of AI can burn brightly or dimly. Disruption is a norm, and the ability to adapt to disruptions is what defines all of
us. And to adapt to the fast-approaching, rapidly evolving
AI future, all parties – from workers to enterprises to governments - will need
to spend more time listening to each other, collaborate and constantly learn
new knowledge and skills.
