Impact of AI and Automation

8 Key excerpts on "Impact of AI and Automation"

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  eBook - ePub

  Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Business and Society

  Opportunities and Challenges

  • Francesco Paolo Appio, Davide La Torre, Francesca Lazzeri, Hatem Masri, Francesco Schiavone, Francesco Paolo Appio, Davide La Torre, Francesca Lazzeri, Hatem Masri, Francesco Schiavone(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part 3 The Societal Impact of Artificial Intelligence Passage contains an image

  8 AI Human Capital, Jobs and Skills

  Lea Samek and Mariagrazia Squicciarini

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003304616-12

  8.1 Introduction

  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered by many a General Purpose Technology (GPT). It is profoundly transforming the way people work, learn or interact (Bessen, 2019 ; Georgieff and Hyee, 2021 ; Acemoglu et al., 2022 ) and has a strong potential to facilitate innovation (Agrawal, Gans and Goldfarb, 2018 ; Cockburn, Henderson and Stern, 2018 ; Gierten et al., 2021 ) and increase productivity (Brynjolfsson, Rock and Syverson, 2017 ; Corrado, Haskel and Jona-Lasinio, 2021 ; Rammer, Czarnitzki and Fernández, 2021 ). By shaping the way information is generated and processed, AI decision-supporting algorithms can complement or augment a number of tasks that workers perform on the job, such as cancer detection in MRI scans (Bi et al., 2019 ), and may lead to automate others, especially routine tasks.

  AI also contributes to creating new and different types of jobs, and to redefining occupational profiles through shaping skill requirements. As AI development, deployment, and adoption increases and AI technologies evolve, the (sets of) skills that the workers of today and tomorrow need to be endowed with change. This ultimately entails that adapting to and thriving in the AI era requires individuals to not only acquire new skills and competencies but to also engage in lifelong learning.

  In what follows, we first review the literature concerned with AI adoption and automation and discuss the possible employment implications, which vary across demographic groups, occupations, and regions (Section 8.2

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  The Home in the Digital Age

  • Antonio Argandoña, Joy Malala, Richard Peatfield, Antonio Argandoña, Joy Malala, Richard Peatfield(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  status quo , alter the way people live and work and, ultimately, vote will rearrange traditional value systems and lead to new products, services and jobs, and has revived old angst over automation and the future of work. While much of the public and policy debates on AI and employment have tended to oscillate between fears of the “end of (human) employment” and reassurances that little will change, there is evidence that suggests that neither of these extremes is likely. This chapter aims to provide a non-exhaustive and non-technical summary of a small subset of recent literature related to AI and its influence on the way humans work and live. Automation and other frontier technologies, of which AI is the most popularized one, are transforming businesses and are already contributing to economic growth through the increase of productivity. These technologies are transforming the nature of work and the workplace itself. It has long been true that machines are able to carry out more of the tasks done by humans; they have complemented the work that humans do and have even performed some tasks that go beyond what humans can do.

  As a result, workers have had to grapple with significant workforce transitions and dislocation. Workers have had to acquire new skills and adapt to the increasingly capable machines alongside them. This has been prevalent in the era of the industrial ages as well as the computer and digital age. Over time, this has resulted in shakeup of jobs (professions), the increasing decline of certain occupations, and the introduction and growth of new ones. This phenomenon is known as the augmentation and enhancing of the human worker, which is tipped as the process through which humans shall eventually be replaced (Kane et al., 2019 ).

  However, it is not only jobs performed by individuals in various activities that are being dramatically transformed by AI and other technologies. Apart from business, it is the functioning of the public sector and how it delivers services (in sectors such as farming, education, financial services, health, policing and others) to citizens. As mentioned, AI has particularly replaced either routine work or skilled jobs that are based on making predications from past data. Although AI has real potential to contribute to addressing more effectively large-scale challenges such as healthcare, humanitarian crises or climate crises, on the other hand risks linked to widespread and indiscriminate use related to data privacy, identity, cyber-security and the like are also real and expose the negative side of AI. Combined, all these challenges and opportunities coming out of the rise of AI may have significant implications for how the “home” will function in the near future as well as the place of work. This chapter offers just a glimpse into the vast possibilities this change may bring.

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  Leading and Managing Change in the Age of Disruption and Artificial Intelligence

  • Mathew Donald(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3

  Organisational Implications of Artificial Intelligence

  AI does not mean no humans; it will just change the way things work. —Mathew Donald

  Artificial intelligence (AI) may be transformational (Boyd & Holton, 2018), where the concept of automation and AI have been discussed in the literature since as early as the 1970s (Felsen, 1975). The amount of data available in repositories may have exceeded the human capability to process (Crombez & Dahms, 2015), where AI may now even be an essential element to operate them. Science fiction has imagined for over 50 years that AI may emerge to rival the human race (Benson, 2018); yet to date, that has not occurred. A more robust definition for the term AI may be required in the future should quality, ethics or other legal matters present as AI develops (Lehman-Wilzig, 1981). AI may also have elements of games, mimicking human thought and products for use by humans (Parnas, 2017). As AI emerges, there will be new product opportunities, whilst there is a societal risk of dislocation and widespread unemployment in its wake (Makridakis, 2017), where new skills may be required (Engelbrecht, 2017).

  Smartphones today have vast computing power, connectivity to Internet and social media, with many including location and the global positioning systems (GPS) and other advanced technologies. These new technologies impact on individual and organisational communication, information and transactions amongst many others. Many new cars are already fitted with computers that control engines, many with smartphones or GPS capabilities and thus driving is already vastly different to that in 1980. As was discussed in Chapter 2

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  The 4th Industrial Revolution

  Responding to the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business

  • Mark Skilton, Felix Hovsepian(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  © The Author(s) 2018

  Mark Skilton and

  Felix Hovsepian

  The 4th Industrial Revolution https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62479-2_11

  Begin Abstract

  11. Example Case Studies of Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Jobs and Productivity

  Mark Skilton

  1  

  and

  Felix Hovsepian

  2  

  (1) Knowle, Solihull, UK

  (2) Meriden, UK

   

   

  Mark Skilton  (Corresponding author)

  Email: [email protected]

    Felix Hovsepian

  Email: [email protected]

  End Abstract

  Introduction

  “If there is a chance to improve and upscale the quality and efficiency of systems and operations, why wouldn’t everyone take the opportunity?” was raised by a Nikhil Kulkami, a recent graduate. He is very much the next generation that will have much to say in how the workplace and society will change. This is the scope of where we are planning to head, especially with the drive to implement more intelligent solutions for the infrastructures available in today’s society; this drive is being achieved through integrating artificial intelligence (AI), which is the goal of allowing ‘computer systems to exhibit intelligence in some manner’ [1 ]. Artificial intelligence has progressed from the development standpoint in computer science to being fully used to extract, analyse and predict vast amounts of data in varying industries. The integration of technologies like AI is helping improve the operation and efficiency of several infrastructures, as well as reducing their financial costs.

  The next section in this document highlights real examples of industries which have implemented artificial intelligence in their daily processes. We provide a summary table for quick reference of the types of Artificial Intelligence and the pragmatic impact of these in managing planned and unplanned outcomes. We then provide a list of practitioner case studies that describe how artificial intelligence is being used today.

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  The Future of Work and Technology

  Global Trends, Challenges and Policies with an Australian Perspective

  • Andreas Cebulla(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Chapman and Hall/CRC

    (Publisher)

  9 More than Programming? The Impact of AI on Work and Skills Toby Walsh

  DOI: 10.1201/9781003393757-9

  In my opinion, ignoring AI is like ignoring blogging in the late 1990s, or social media circa 2004, or mobile in 2007. Very quickly, some degree of facility with these tools will be increasingly essential for all professionals, a primary driver for new opportunities and new jobs. Developing skills and competencies in it now will yield benefits for years to come.

  It’s also true that the changes AI will bring will have negative impacts as well as positive ones. Previous technology revolutions disrupted specific subgroups, like craftsmen whose production was replace by factories – or, more recently, factory workers who lost their jobs to increased automation.

  Now, knowledge workers are also facing these challenges. While I strongly believe that these new AI tools will create new jobs and new industries, along with great economic benefits and other quality-of-life gains, they will also eliminate some jobs, both blue- and white-collar.

  (Hoffman & GPT4, 2023 , pp. 110–111)

  It seems certain that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a large impact on economy and society. For instance, one study estimates that it will grow the world’s economy by around 15 percent or so, contributing over $15 trillion annually in inflation-adjusted terms (Rao & Verweij, 2017 ). Such disruption will not be without pain. One of the greatest fears about AI is the impact it will have on work. Will it eliminate many jobs? Will workers who embrace AI be more productive and replace those workers who do not? For jobs that are not replaced by AI, how will the skills that workers need evolve? For the new jobs that AI creates, what skills will be needed? And will AI be a net positive, creating more jobs than it destroys? Or will it be a net negative?

  It is clear already that the impacts will not be even. Some countries will be impacted greater than others. Even within a country, impacts will not be even. Some sectors of the economy will be more severely disrupted than others. Predicting where those impacts will fall and what they will be is not easy. It isn’t as simple as the blue-collar workers doing manual work who will be replaced by robots and white-collar workers doing cognitive work who will be saved. There are, unfortunately, blue-collar workers doing jobs too poorly paid for it to be economically viable to replace. There are also blue-collar workers doing jobs that robots cannot do. Plumbers and electricians are, for example, likely safe from automation for a long time. And some blue-collar jobs may be invulnerable to technological disruption even when AI could, in theory, do them. We will likely always value the artisan over the mass produced: so, in opposition to what Reid Hoffman argued in the opening quotation, jobs such as cabinet maker may remain even when machines could in theory do the work. On the other hand, there are white-collar workers who are perhaps less confident today that their jobs are safe from automation than they were a decade ago. For instance, graphic designers were perhaps not too concerned about their jobs until image-to-text tools like Stable Diffusion and DALL-e arrived hinting at a future where a lot of graphic design might be automated.

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  Reinventing Manufacturing and Business Processes Through Artificial Intelligence

  • Geeta Rana, Alex Khang, Ravindra Sharma, Alok Kumar Goel, Ashok Kumar Dubey, Geeta Rana, Alex Khang, Ravindra Sharma, Alok Kumar Goel, Ashok Kumar Dubey(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  With the development of AI, its practice has also increased in several ways in international business, which has changed the trade effect at the macroeconomic level; for example, as AI increases productivity and growth, it will lead to an increase in economic growth and gives new opportunities at a global level. Currently, the productivity growth rate at the global level is much less for various reasons (Remes et al., 2018)—the first reason is that countries take time to integrate and make effective use of new technologies such as AI, which is a relatively complicated one with economy-wide impacts (Brynjolfsson et al., 2017).

  AI is likely to affect not only the type but also the quality of economic growth with international trade implications; it will fasten the transition toward service economies. Similarly, AI will also aid international trade in terms of expansion of automation and speed up job losses for the low-skilled and blue-collar workers in the manufacturing sector, as well (Arnet et al., 2016).

  6.3.1 IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN VARIOUS SECTORS

  AI will undoubtedly grow in the coming years, eventually becoming commonplace, and technology has made it possible for computers to use large quantities of data in decision-making processes or to learn on their own. Technology giants like Google, Apple and Facebook are already putting money, effort and time into AI integration. These businesses have also taken steps to educate the general public about AI’s capabilities and limits. But this automation in business will result in substituting many fields; for example, jobs and skills will remain to contribute to the shortage of employment, as artificial intelligence is a compliment to some extent to labor and will not substitute for them entirely. Artificial intelligence is already being used in areas such as law, political science, policy and economics; it will soon be used in areas such as warfare, autonomous transportation, education and space exploration, to name a few.

  Let’s take a look at some of the potential and likely future AI applications that will undoubtedly improve people’s lives. Under the influence of AI, the transportation, healthcare, logistics, finance and industrial manufacturing industries, among many others, would undergo massive transformations, allowing them to become more efficient, cost-effective and, most importantly, provide better services. Subsequently, artificial intelligence will have positive impacts on different sectors which somehow directly and indirectly affect the global business environment and are shown in Figure 6.4

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  The New World of Work

  Shaping a Future that Helps People, Organizations and Our Societies to Thrive

  • Peter Cheese(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Kogan Page

    (Publisher)

  The fourth industrial revolution, also referred to as Industry 4.0, has the potential to be as era defining as the first industrial revolution. It will impact us all. Technology has therefore been the focus of so much of the debate in recent years about the future of work. But as we have already seen, it is coming together with other significant shifts and changes. Taken together they add up to perhaps a perfect storm, but certainly to a new era.

  A new era driven by data and artificial intelligence

  Data is the new fuel of Industry 4.0. And artificial intelligence in its many manifestations is the engine that uses that fuel to drive the new era.

  Artificial intelligence underpins almost all the new fields of technology. The basic definition of AI is technology that seeks to automate or simulate what we would generally describe as intelligent behaviour. AI in its basic forms has been with us since the 1950s but is now a huge field with many different levels of sophistication and application, enabled by huge advances in data-processing power and capabilities.

  To better understand AI and its pervasive range of applications, there are some generally accepted classifications6 which are based on relating AI to human-type intelligence:

  • The most basic AI are ‘reactive machines’, which automatically respond to limited sets of inputs but have no memory. This level of AI has been with us for decades and widely applied. Just think of heating sensors or speed cameras.
  • The next level are ‘limited memory machines’, which can learn from historical data to make ‘decisions’ or alter outputs. This level of AI therefore includes machine learning whereby AI systems repeat tasks and refine their predictive outputs, for example in marketing analytics or chatbots. Within machine learning is so-called deep learning where applications are increasingly able to train themselves to perform tasks without further input – voice- and image-recognition applications would be examples.

  These first two levels are broadly where we are today. AI at these levels is limited to specific tasks based on predetermined and predefined ranges. This is also called artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) or narrow AI. However, it is already clear that many higher-order analytical and cognitive tasks can be performed even better than humans can perform them, allowing automation to move beyond basic administrative or routine tasks. Driverless vehicles are a fascinating example – while they may look like they have a wider intelligence, they are operating from huge combinations of very specialized ANI applications.

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  New Directions in the Future of Work

  • Mónica Santana, Ramón Valle-Cabrera, Mónica Santana, Ramón Valle-Cabrera(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  But it is much easier to deter-mine which jobs will be affected by automation (as we did in Section 2.1) than to predict what types of jobs will be created in the upcoming years. This is partly because future job creation depends on technologies that do not currently exist or The Impact of Technology on the Present and the Future of Work 129 are still in their development phase. For example, some jobs that have been cre-ated recently, such as cloud storage and cybersecurity specialists, big data experts, 3D print technicians, drone operators, youtubers and many more, did not exist some decades ago. Consequently, it was impossible to predict that they were going to appear until they started to be seen. In any case, even if we cannot name the jobs that will appear in the future, we may be in a better position to describe what workers will be doing in the jobs of the future. In this regard, Wilson, Daugherty, and Morini-Bianzino (2017 ) mention some profiles that are expected to emerge as a consequence of the increased use of AI, such as trainers (workers managing large amounts of data and designing algorithms to train AI systems), explainers (workers able to inter-pret the outcomes of AI systems) and sustainers (workers that will help ensure that AI systems are operating as designed and that unintended consequences are addressed with the appropriate urgency). Other works focus instead on the advances in industrial robotics, suggesting that these developments could gener-ate employment in the provision of robotics support services in manufacturing firms, as well as in the manufacturing of robots ( Eurofound, 2019 ). Roles in these areas would include programmers and specialists in robot maintenance, among many other profiles. Although these occupations would not be entirely new, they would involve new combinations of skills as industrial robots evolve. Job profiles involving the management and elaboration of large amounts of data will also be in high demand.

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