Periodically now, reports and articles emerge condemning Artificial Intelligence (AI) for job losses. A study by the Oxford University states that nearly half the known present jobs would be lost by 2033. The OECD meanwhile claims that 9% of the jobs in its twenty-one member states could be lost much earlier. Management consulting giant McKinsey too states that job losses could be pegged at five percent. However, deeper introspection of available data tells us that more than automating human jobs, AI is actually engaged in machine-to-machine tasks. Such transactions are the low hanging fruits of this field rather than the mass people displacement as fear mongers have suggested. IT, marketing, finance and customer service are broadly the four fields in which majority of the world’s companies are investing in AI for. Three broad methods have been identified to locate these low hanging fruits. The obvious first one is to use AI in fields with an instant return on revenue and cost. An example of this would be Amazon’s use of AI to detect frauds. Certain opportunities need to be identified where the talks could be accomplished using the same number of people as involved presently. The Associated Press (AP) for example automated a large number of factual stories to its AI usage to increase footprint without affecting any employment. The business transformations attempted must start with the back end operations and not the front office. This is because front end operations such as sales or customer service require empathy and touch ordinary lives on daily basis.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/04/how-companies-are-already-using-ai?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Uploaded Date:10 July 2017