Chief Executive Officer at Safeguard Global.
getty
As the newest wave of artificial intelligence applications (and the hype that surrounds them) continues to make its mark in various sectors, one thing is becoming clear: Humans have more of a role to play in the future of AI than naysayers claim. Contrary to popular belief, AI isn't about removing, much less replacing, people. It's about rethinking work, skills and how we continue to evolve human potential.
Using AI doesn’t mean you’re surrendering to a machine. Instead, you're leveraging technology as a means to accomplishing your more laborious tasks. For example, Zendesk implemented a ChatGPT plugin to synthesize customer information and provide AI-generated answers to frequently asked questions. By processing vast amounts of data, AI can reduce time spent on repetitive research tasks, allowing your employees to focus on work that's more complex, requires critical thinking and deserves more sensitive responses.
Humans Create The Quality In AI Relationships
As counterintuitive as it may seem to the AI-fearful, there are many approaches to incorporating this technology effectively into your business. By taking a steady, agile and practical approach, many companies have realized a shift in how their business opportunities merge with or complement the potential of their people. What's vital is to remember that, as powerful as AI is, its output depends on what we put into it.
While it may seem like an old cliche, "garbage in, garbage out" is a concept that still holds true today, especially regarding how we use AI. The quality of AI-generated results is only as good as the data it's fed. That's why confidence in the source material is critical, as is understanding AI's limitations. For instance, ChatGPT doesn't read minds; it processes information based on human-provided prompts that establish the boundaries of a proper, accurate response.
Though we may need fewer people for certain tasks as AI adoption becomes more mainstream, the demand for responsiveness, critical thinking and analytical and creative skills will remain important to organizations. These traits are invaluable for a workforce that wants to harness AI's complementary capabilities.
A New Approach To The Workforce
A stunning 84% of top-tier executives believe leveraging AI is not just beneficial, but inevitable. With the future demanding the integration of these tools, organizations must equip themselves to keep pace with rapid technological advancement.
In the post-industrial era, labor was the driving factor of production, and when an employee couldn’t meet or keep up with the changing needs of their role, they were replaced. But in today’s landscape, companies' responses to the rapid changes in technology are putting more emphasis on employee training and reskilling so top talent can adapt to new technology.
Understand Your Company's Current Skills Composition
Before embracing AI, the first thing you must do is get a clear idea of the skills and capabilities of your workforce. This can comprise current skill sets, training criteria and insights from managers about their people and their potential.
From there, you can begin to look at how to apply AI in your organization by reviewing examples and functions that are currently challenging the old ways of working. While skill sets will need to continue to change, that doesn’t need to come from an entirely new workforce once AI is more fully integrated into work experiences. Instead, you can train the workforce to align with technology's capabilities. For instance, repetition-based tasks may offer higher-level opportunities for interns with a background in data and statistics because they can help compose prompts for document management or searches on existing databases.
Evolve Employees' Skills To Capitalize On AI Tech
Similar to how AI fills the gaps between existing roles, your workforce can adapt to what this technology looks like in practice. The absence of on-the-job training is a missed opportunity for businesses, so ensure you have a skills-forward approach to your workforce strategy. Provide resources and opportunities for employees to learn about AI. They should be able to experiment with tools to understand limitations and learn to review output with a critical eye. This creates a "walk before you run" mindset that's backed by the institutional knowledge of your company.
Encouraging this kind of exploration requires allocating time for employees to experiment with new tools and technology. Additionally, executives should lead by example and learn, share and ask questions about new AI resources. A structured approach to AI adoption that focuses on learning opportunities rather than an assumptive "one size fits all" mindset will be vital to your implementation strategies.
AI is not a replacement for human ingenuity; it's an augmentation. The rise of this technology presents an opportunity for us to rethink work and skills, allowing us to focus on the areas where humans truly excel—creativity, strategic thinking and understanding complex emotions. The AI world is a people-dependent one, where its true benefit is in how it’s used.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
