With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots, technology is now interwoven into most of our everyday job duties. But is that all? Probably not. Read on as the author sheds some light on how these technologies are fast becoming omnipresent and how they are likely to have a big impact on how we perform our jobs in the years to come.
We are rapidly moving towards a workplace where people interact with machines on a routine basis. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots, technology is now interwoven into most of our everyday job duties. In fact, according to some reports, more than 80% of businesses plan to use chatbots by 2020.
Over the past few years, technology has made huge advances in approximating human interaction, especially when it comes to speech recognition, detecting emotions, visual cues, and voice intonation. From Apple’s Siri to Google Home, these technologies are fast becoming omnipresent and are likely to have a big impact on how we perform our jobs in the years to come. AI is set to impact work in three major ways: human-to-machine interaction, smart process automation and advanced analytics.
We are rapidly moving towards a workplace where people interact with machines on a routine basis.
Human-to-Machine Interaction
Human-to-machine interaction is becoming highly advanced, and today the goal is to make machines interact like humans in as many ways as possible. Machines are just starting to be able to detect emotion in our voices and written words, and they can learn to change their responses accordingly.
“Although machines powered by AI can complete some tasks, they can’t totally replace humans yet. The creativity and agility of the human brain is something that machines are yet to master.”
In particular, chatbots demonstrate how technology is increasingly able to capture the human essence by evoking and responding to human emotions and actions. For example, the next generation of Siri has a much more human-like voice and better intonation. That all comes from machine learning and AI. Many enterprise-grade chatbot platforms also support cognitive emotion detection.
So How Does this Impact our Work?
With these advances, people don’t need to master complex menus or learn how to program or operate things. Interacting with machines via the spoken word, they can simply ask a question or state a command and a machine will autonomously provide answers and assist in completing tasks. It’s like having a personal assistant or a second set of hands available to you on the job at all times.
Smart Process Automation
AI will also affect work through smart process automation, the elimination of work, and the labour arbitrage associated with replacing people with bots. Today, machines are already responsible for much of the basic work being done across many industries. From robotic process automation and natural language document translation to fielding customer service requests, they are becoming smarter and more capable.
Although machines powered by AI can complete some tasks, they can’t totally replace humans yet. The creativity and agility of the human brain is something that machines are yet to master. Take journalism, for instance. AI-powered machines today can independently write a fairly good basic news story. But that is just 80% of the task done. Some of the nuanced and stylistic elements of writing and editing are best left to humans, at least for now.
“Advanced Analytics enables business leaders to gain insight into their organisations as they function, allowing them to increase revenue, reduce costs and improve overall customer satisfaction.”
While there is no question that machines’ capabilities will continue to improve and expand, potentially resulting in the displacement of more human workers, the knowledge and aptitude of people will still be very much needed in the future.
Advanced Analytics
The third way AI impacts businesses is through advanced analytics- using data to find patterns and then using machine learning to discover insights. This really gets to the heart of the question ‘How are AI-powered machines and chatbots changing the future of work?
Advanced analytics and AI- based machine learning are about discovering patterns in data and using those identified patterns to generate value. It helps companies better plan business operations and better understand their customers. This technology enables business leaders to gain insight into their organisations as they function, allowing them to increase revenue,reduce costs and improve overall customer satisfaction. In today’s digital age, companies must act quickly, and often in real time. That’s why advanced analytics is be- coming essential for organisations that want to be truly insight-driven.
In fact, companies today are becoming more customer-centric as digital technologies pervade day-to-day experiences. As a result, it is critically important to truly know customers’ likes and dislikes, demographic attributes, and other factors associated with enhancing both revenue and engagement. Largely, companies can achieve this through the application of advanced analytics, machine learning and real-time personalization of content and interaction. Taken a step further, advanced AI techniques can be used to predict the actions of customers and, with that information, offer different products or services at the right time through the right digital channel.
“AI is powering machines that can communicate conversationally with humans, augment and/or fully automate knowledge work, and discover patterns in data, allowing organisations to become insight-driven.”
We truly are living in interesting times, with advances coming at a rapid pace. AI, a truly disruptive technology, is impacting how we work, live, and play. AI is powering machines that can communicate conversationally with humans, augment and/or fully automate knowledge work, and discover patterns in data, allowing organisations to become insight-driven.
Organisations today must take all of these things into consideration in order to be competitive in the business world of tomorrow and a better promise for our tendering future.
