Artificial Intelligence is forecasted by Gartner to generate more employment opportunities than it displaces by the year 2020.
In the rapidly evolving world of technology, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is making significant strides, particularly in nonroutine work. Contrary to popular belief, AI is more likely to assist humans than replace them, as the synergy between humans and machines will lead to more effective performance.
A report by Gartner suggests that AI augmentation, a combination of human and artificial intelligence, is the greatest AI benefit. This symbiosis is set to generate $2.9 trillion in business value and recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity in 2021.
Industries like manufacturing and retail are expected to reap a massive share of this business value opportunity. In manufacturing, automation will lead to cost savings, while the removal of friction in value chains will increase revenue further. On the other hand, retailers will be able to make labor savings by eliminating highly repetitive and transactional jobs, but will need to reinvest some of those savings into training associates who can enhance the customer experience.
Retailers are not viewing AI as a means to remove humans from every process, but rather as a way to augment customer experiences. This is particularly true in specialized areas such as home improvement, drugstores, and cosmetics, where many consumers still prefer to interact with a knowledgeable sales associate.
The German industries that achieved the greatest value creation advantages through the use of AI augmentation in 2021 were primarily in human resources (HR), production, and logistics. Here, AI was used for tasks such as predictive maintenance and process optimization, with a significant impact expected especially in HR functions where over 60% of traditional tasks could be taken over by AI systems by 2030.
However, the transition to AI is not without its challenges. It is expected to lead to a temporary period of job loss, recovery, and business transformation. Through 2019, industries like healthcare, the public sector, and education saw continuously growing job demand, while manufacturing was hit the hardest. But starting in 2020, AI-related job creation began to cross into positive territory, reaching two million net-new jobs in 2025.
As we move towards 2022, one in five workers engaged in mostly nonroutine tasks will rely on AI to do a job. Rather than have a machine replicating the steps that a human performs to reach a particular judgment, the entire decision process can be refactored to use the relative strengths and weaknesses of both machine and human to maximize value generation and redistribute decision making to increase agility.
In conclusion, the integration of AI into our workforce and businesses is not about replacing humans, but about enhancing their capabilities. It's about reinvesting, reinventing, and transforming to adapt to the opportunities and threats that AI presents. Gartner advises focusing on augmenting people with AI, enriching jobs, reimagining tasks, and creating new industries, and transforming culture to adapt to AI-related opportunities or threats. This approach will ensure that we harness the power of AI to drive business value and productivity, while also ensuring that humans remain an integral part of the equation.
