The world is hurtling towards a work environment driven by artificial intelligence. And this is no longer something just looming in the future. It is a disruptive way of business operation which has not only arrived with a bang but is here to stay, grow and consume various familiar ways of life.
There is a snowballing feeling of apprehension and insecurity as humans are relieved of more and more tasks which get delegated to AI. Let’s peek into a very common occurrence. Ali, who worked full time assigning customer queries to the correct department, is now employed for half the hours. AI has taken over the job and performing fantastically – the process now runs faster and with the lowest error margin. While Ali needs to come to terms with his reduced income and how to use the time in hand, the business and most customers are happier with the resource savings. Now let’s take a step back and look at the macro picture. How does this affect the economy and the human capital at large? How does it affect wealth distribution and skill development? Are we moving towards focussing on a handful of skill sets and losing various others which thrive on the human touch? Or, are we better manifesting the 3E’s – economic, efficient, effective – on which economies ride?
Having said that, it was our own choice to create and nurture AI to make life a better fit for the innovation-driven, faster-paced, precision-based future of working and living which we aspire to. We, the human capital, chose to give birth to AI and raise it as the favourite child. On the one hand we champion efforts to nurture and improve our human capital while on the other, that same human capital is assigned the task to develop more efficient AI to replace it. What a pickle!
Come to think of it, why do we continue to develop AI and push its limits? Does it not have anything to do with proving our own intellectual prowess? Because much of AI development rests on two pillars – technologies and trained human capital availability. And, it’s a no brainer that both these pillars are made of one category of bricks – human capital.
This brings us to a very interesting thought. To develop AI we need to nurture human capital.
So, our blue-eyed boy AI is essentially by the Human Capital, of the Human Capital, for the Human Capital…yet, to an extent, against the Human Capital. We see a continuously evolving bittersweet relationship. Yet, a relationship which has immense prospect of becoming a mutually beneficial one if built with balance.