By Sujit Kapre, Co-founder & CTO, iMocha
Lately, if you have been a part of any conversation on innovation, technology, or the future of work, you may have noticed terms, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, or Dall-E, thrown around anxiously.
Why, may you ask? With its sense of magic, AI-generative platforms like ChatGPT have created massive hype across the globe but have also raised curious questions like:
‘Will it replace human beings?’ OR ‘What will happen to jobs in the future?’
The reason?
1. At the rate at which AI technology is evolving, there is a high chance that it’ll soon become smarter, faster, and more efficient than an average human being.
2. If there is one thing that sci-fi movies have taught us is that AI is evil and will one day control us and our planet.
Although the latter is more of a dystopian imagination, the first pointer definitely raises some eyebrows. Let’s dive deep into this topic and try to understand the impact that AI-generative platforms such as ChatGPT will have on our future.
What will be the effects of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools on the future job market?
For those unaware, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a generative AI chatbot that can answer questions in a human-like fashion, write poetry, debug codes, assist with troubleshooting software and hardware issues, and much more.
Let’s say if I asked ChatGPT to write this article, all I had to do would be enter a topic-specific prompt, and ChatGPT would come up with a similar piece in approx. 10 sec (which will be way faster than the time I or any writer will take to do this).
Similarly, if you are a developer and need a particular code immediately, you’ll just ask ChatGPT using a prompt, and it will write the same for you within seconds.
Now the question arises, ‘Will this mean that we won’t need writers or coders in the future?’ The answer would be a big ‘NO’! Why?
1. Human skills will always be relevant as even the most robust AI tool will require human intervention and experience to distinguish scenarios, analyze case history and make the right critical decisions.
2. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are still in the development stages and have a long way to go before they can be relied upon for critical tasks (as explained by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman himself)
An AI tool may write an article the way you want it to, but still, it will need specific human perspectives that only someone with real-life experience can cover.
There may come a time when generative AI tools will be trained to handle all types of business communications alone. However, it’ll still need human skills to cover the emotional aspect, convince customers, and close deals.
Will Generative AI be the death of specific job-specific skills?
Integrating generative AI tools into your business framework may soon become the demand of the hour, but maintaining a team with the right skillset will always help you adapt to more considerable challenges.
Instead of worrying whether AI will replace us, it’s time that we think about how we can use the wonders of AI and ML to boost our product offerings. To balance the AI vs. human conflict, we need to:
1. Stop antagonizing AI and think of it as an assistant that will reduce our workload and significantly expedite our business processes by taking up tedious and repetitive tasks. A trained AI can efficiently handle numerous backend tasks and save your organization time and money.
2. Create a skill-first work culture so you’ll always have the right professionals to cover the spaces that AI may leave. Assess and hire the best talent so they can leverage AI’s offerings to its full potential.
3. Most importantly, realize that all past technological changes, such as the industrial revolution or the internet, have created similar anxiety and job-related uncertainties but eventually failed to remove the human element from their respective industries. Remember, even if such drastic technological advancements have removed specific portfolios, they have also given birth to new skills and job roles.
4. Create a comprehensive skills inventory and keep track of skills that you and your workforce may need moving forward.
How will AI simplify business processes, especially HR?
AI tools such ChatGPT use OpenAI’s GPT-3 series of foundation models for conversational applications. For HR technology, these models could be very helpful in the natural language processing (NLP) space and can automate interactive components such as virtual assistants, chatbots, processing unstructured data and digital twins. They can also be used for the testing of candidates, especially their soft skills such as business English proficiency. Other application of foundation models can be for:
-Text Rewrites
-Translations
-Text Generation
-Summarisation, and more.
Final Thought
Considering these benefits of AI and how it can simplify repetitive and day-to-day tasks, it’s time we give away the fear and develop a skilled workforce that can complement such innovations. As skills leaders, we’ll have to aim towards creating a workflow where AI and humans can work in tandem and accept these technological disruptions with open arms. Sooner, or later more new advancement may come but with a skill-first ideology, we’ll be able to adapt as per those changes and leverage them for our growth.
