How will Artificial Intelligence (AI) impact the future of work – Mary T. O’Sullivan

By Mary T. O’Sullivan, MSOL, contributing writer on business

“AI won’t replace humans—but humans with AI will replace humans without AI.” – Professor Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School

Although people tend to resist using or relying on AI, leaders are determined to incorporate automation more and more into the workplace. They tout the benefits as reducing or eliminating repetitive, boring, and time consuming tasks that many humans spend their entire careers performing.  Imagine no longer having to toil entering data, creating schedules and reports, filling out government forms, or researching arcane information like labor rates in Texas. Simply make a query, and the information pops up in the correct format, and with the same accuracy as the organization’s database. The assumption is that the database is accurate and the AI tool has learned enough about the user and the organization to fashion the required documents as well or better than a human. 

The lure of AI is not only its potential for accuracy, but speed as well. Reports that would normally take a week, now can be accomplished in a few hours. Large masses of data, like the thousands of pages required for submission to the state or federal government, or to major companies (like pharmaceutical or defense) can be quickly spit out in correct form, including dates, organizational formats, proprietary statements, and other details that otherwise would need to be checked and double checked by experts. The AI tool has those details embedded in its memory. AI doesn’t need lessons learned, it automatically learns from its mistakes, and never repeats them again, unlike humans who often rotate jobs within the organization and often face new tasks, otherwise known as the “learning curve”. Once AI learns tasks, it has the ability to incorporate that learning into new information when needed; there is no “learning curve”.

But with such speed and accuracy, why do employees resist embracing this groundbreaking technology at work? According to Harvard Business Review, “in a 2023 Gartner survey, 79% of corporate strategists said that the use of AI, automation, and analytics would be critical to their success over the next two years. But only 20% of them reported using AI in their daily activities.”  The relevance of AI in an organization heavily depends on people’s willingness to use it. What is the root cause of harboring such widespread reservations? In several recent studies, a number of reasons for human reluctance to embrace AI have been isolated. Two stood out as stellar examples of people’s fear of “robots” taking over.

Not surprisingly, the number one reason given by both Harvard Business Review and NILG.AI (an AI training platform), is fear of job loss. This apprehension arises when humans realize that various mental tasks can be performed by AI, like analyzing medical records, sales prediction and forecasting, and personalized recommendations, like dating. What turns the “Doubting Thomas’s” around is adjusting people’s mindset. In one study, people were asked to predict whether AI could detect cancerous tissue better than a doctor. Scans of a skin cancer sample were examined by both AI and a physician. The participants’ attitudes changed once they were told the results – the AI tool was in fact more accurate than the human diagnosis. This demonstration made them less biased against using AI, at least for medical purposes. 

Another fear emerges when people believe that AI is emotionless. People are naturally skeptical that AI can accomplish subjective tasks. The fact that AI can identify emotions in human faces, and perform face recognition out of thousands of faces, and produce still images and videos from written human suggestions shows that AI already uses many subjective skills. However, people are more likely to trust an AI financial advisor than an AI dating App, especially if the dating App has no human qualities. In fact, multiple studies have shown that when making the AI tool more human-like, as in Amazon’s Alexa, people are more accepting of AI. Alexa has a female voice and a name. When more human characteristics are added to the tool, humans are more accepting. In a study using self-driving cars, people were more comfortable when the car possessed a human-like avatar and voice.

Resistance to AI is common in the workplace, but it can be overcome by addressing the root causes of resistance, fear of job loss, and lack of humanization.  When strategies are put in place to encourage the adoption of AI, reluctance to the tool lessens. If businesses want to fully utilize the power of AI to improve their operations and outcomes, they must accommodate the human element. Regardless of how much money organizations invest in AI, the leadership team must consider the psychological barriers to general acceptance by employees. Every AI deployment will face barriers to full rollout, so don’t leap into a new system and expect people to love it. It’s the job of the leader to recognize these potential obstacles to success and support the team, customers and stakeholders while they adapt to the new reality.

“…in the age of AI, skills that would actually matter are those that make us humans. From creativity to critical thinking, soft skills are expected to take the lead in becoming the most valuable and in-demand skills in the market.” – EuroNews

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Mary T. O’Sullivan, Master of Science, Organizational Leadership, International Coaching Federation Professional Certified Coach, Society of Human Resource Management, “Senior Certified Professional. Graduate Certificate in Executive and Professional Career Coaching, University of Texas at Dallas.

Member, Beta Gamma Sigma, the International Honor Society.

Advanced Studies in Education from Montclair University, SUNY Oswego and Syracuse University.

Mary is also a certified Six Sigma Specialist, Contract Specialist, IPT Leader and holds a Certificate in Essentials of Human Resource Management from SHRM.