Artificial intelligence (AI) will in some way be part of the future American workforce, but forward-thinking employers and employees can prepare themselves for a new dynamic now.
Key Details
- Boston Consulting Group director Julia Dhar explains the 10-20-70 strategy to help companies fully embrace AI technology, detailed below.
- One other way to aid the transition and make employees more comfortable with AI is to automate time-consuming tasks that employees may find burdensome.
- However, employers will have to consider what other work to assign staff after the AI takes away repetitive tasks.
- Another obstacle to fully embracing AI is that many workers are not fully literate in operating the technology or even what it is capable of.
- Employers can evaluate what education is needed to promote more employees taking advantage of whatever AI system works best for their business.
Why it’s news
It would be wide for employees to reconsider what skills will be deemed valuable in the future of work. Employers may need to start investing in their employees in a whole new way, reexamining the most beneficial professional development tools.
Helpful AI tools have been standard in the workplace for some time, performing tasks such as writing up earnings reports and cashier-less retail checkouts. However, generative AI tools like ChatGPT have opened up the options for new automation methods, which could lead to some jobs falling by the wayside.
Recently, Netflix used an AI tool to generate backgrounds for a short cartoon, airlines are using AI to better predict flight patterns, and Buzzfeed announced that an AI would generate some of its quizzes.
Around 69% of individuals with college degrees worry that their job may be replaced by AI, according to a survey from chatbot developer Tidio. In the 2020 World Economic Forum, leaders predicted that machines would replace nearly 85 million jobs by 2025, Fortune reports.
But those are predictions that really have no basis in reality so companies can only prepare. With BCG’s 10-20-70 formula, 10% of the business’s focus is on developing an algorithm that suits its needs, 20% of its focus is on creating the needed technology and gathering data to inform the AI, and 70% is on how to support human workers and adapt its current business processes appropriately.
One other way to aid the transition and make employees more comfortable with AI is to automate time-consuming tasks that employees may find burdensome.
While the advent of newer AI tools will undoubtedly mean an adjustment of the status quo, a World Economic Forum study revealed that automation also has the potential to introduce an additional 97 million jobs by 2025.
There are some skills that only a human can perform, such as critical inquiry, assessing the quality of AI’s work, and ethics. Employees should better develop these skills to manage AI technology effectively.
“We’re between the fully human world and automation, and giving people the skills to say: What does a good-quality question look like? Can I validate whether I have received a good-quality answer? And is that answer safe, appropriate, and ethical for me to be able to take action on? Those are the skills of the future,” Dhar says.