AI: About to turn the business world upside down?

AI seems set to turn the world of business upside down with a rapidly developing range of intelligent systems like ChatGPT that will change the nature of work and business - but how much of an impact will it have in the short term? Are we set for a slow-burn evolution or overnight revolution?

The European Parliament’s Think Tank on AI found that 14% of jobs in OECD countries are highly automatable and another 32% could face substantial changes, while Goldman Sachs have been busy putting the wind up the world’s workers by saying 300 million jobs could be displaced by AI.

CEO of the digital agency and AI software developer, Spéire, Stephen Wilson Downey said: “The industry is in its infancy, and everyone should see this as a huge opportunity. ChatGPT is open to the masses and it is the first chance for people to use AI as a tool as part of their day-to-day activities. But AI can’t sit there and imagine, it is still quite stupid. What ChatGPT has done is produce the illusion of creating something.”

On the frightening scale of potential for job losses, Wilson Downey wholeheartedly disagreed with the Goldman Sachs estimates, saying they were highly inaccurate: “It’s bonkers. Who produced that metric? How do they know? Who can predict the future? There is good and bad with everything and we can see that with the internet.”

“AI is a machine and a machine needs an operator. If you think back to the invention of the Spinning Jenny for textile production, it automated tasks and made the process more efficient and lower cost, creating jobs not destroying them, because demand for the cheaper products and efficiency of production rose.”

“What’s most likely is that 300 million jobs will change with AI, not be displaced,” he said.

So what is AI most useful for in business? “It is most useful for automating dead administrative tasks such as transferring one piece of information from one piece of software into another piece of software because the two pieces of software can’t talk to each other, AI can do that and it will free up people to do their real job.”

By automating those dead and time-consuming tasks, “people to people interaction will increase and will become a more important part of people’s jobs,” he said.

There are potential downsides to every new technology and Wilson Downey said “the EU was leading the way globally on this, with the development of an EU legal framework to manage risks with AI which should protect people and businesses from misuse of AI for surveillance and misuse of data. The framework is designed to make sure AI is applied ethically, and that built-in bias is identified and rebalanced. All of this will create jobs in monitoring of AI rather than destroy them.”

In his own business, Spéire, they are already moving from using Github for coding to embracing Co-pilot which works with programmers to do a significant proportion of the repetitive coding that programmers and software developers face as a key part of their job.

AI is already being deployed by larger companies who already have structured data where they can apply AI to automate but smaller businesses are struggling to know where to start. Stephen continued they should go to Enterprise Ireland or their Local Enterprise Office to take advantage of the digital transformation grant to find where they can harness it for their business.

AI will certainly bring disruption to businesses and particular sectors: “In 5-10 years AI will be able to produce a well-functioning website, so while there will be AI operators [jobs to manage the AI creating the websites] which will be more efficient, web designers will have to evolve and change,” Wilson Downey said.

This is a signal to businesses that they do need to start preparing for the oncoming AI transformation and start thinking about how they can apply it in their business. Wilson Downey believes workers will ultimately be happier working with AI because it will free them from monotonous tasks, freeing them up for more creative and peoplecentred tasks.

It is clear that AI presents both a monumental challenge and opportunity for businesses, how quickly that transformation will play out remains to be seen.