Every end-of-year working assumption is the same: Next year will be different. This is the eternal optimism of business and the never-ending story of innovation. However, this time it is true — certainly when it comes to workplace technology. All sorts of incredible things would be possible at your desk (wherever your desk is), but it would come at a price: possibly the steepest learning curve in knowledge work since the word processor way back in the analog age of the 1970s.
ChatGPT’s arrival a year ago has captured the collective imagination with 100 million users per week, according to its creator, OpenAI. Workers got a taste of what it is like to ask artificial intelligence (AI) tools to write their e-mails and summarize documents for them, but in the year ahead, these tools are only going to become more sophisticated and be able to respond to images, voice commands and potentially carry out more complex tasks with limited human intervention. That has the potential to radically change the day-to-day experience of work.
However, as Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta, which has invested in artificial intelligence since 2014, told a recent conference, “it’s pretty confusing.” That said, he is adamant that AI tools are a career necessity, telling me on my podcast that “Just like when computers were first introduced, skills went on a resume. Saying today you are proficient in AI is a skill.”
Illustration: Yusha
Humans do learn how to use technology, and amazingly fast when you think about it. However, AI brings a new turn on the tech wheel and we have to learn it, too. Why? Because the impact of AI on how we work and the jobs we do is just as revolutionary as the Internet. The earnings boost for some banks is as high as US$340 billion, or a 9 to 15 percent increase in operating profits, research from McKinsey Global Institute showed.
As Peter Miscovich, global future of work leader at real-estate firm JLL, put it: “Generative AI has risen to become an equal and increasing priority for global organizations in comparison to the enterprise priorities of hybrid working and providing flexible work environments.” Yet the corporate sector is on the same steep learning curve as you and me. JLL found in a recent survey that while generative AI comes in third in a ranking of impact on their industry (clean energy solutions is number one), it ranks lowest for “level of knowledge.”
The real-estate sector is not alone in recognizing the knowledge gap. Wipro, an Indian IT company, has committed US$1 billion to training its 250,000 workers, not only to help them understand generative AI, but also to integrate it into its product offerings. Wipro’s own Web page on AI shows a bewildering technical array of terms, just as new acronyms define the flexible working era — take your pick from GPU (graphics processing unit), NLP (natural language processing), ML (machine learning) and LLM (large language model).
I sought the advice of Henry Coutinho-Mason, co-author of The Future Normal, to explain what is what in the ever-expanding lexicon of AI. “The next frontier of interactive and query-able chatbots is going to be voice activated, not text-led,” he said. “Either way, there are plenty of new things to get your head around, such as the correct ‘prompt’ to give generative AI which would only be as good as the information it already stores and receives — just like Google search was back in the day.”
He also patiently explained that chatbots are only one part of the AI equation, albeit a big one. Did you know that by this time at the end of this new year, you might have one of your own — an infinitely customized way of creating and using any information you choose in an app with your name or brand on it? If you know how, it might only take you an afternoon to create your own personalized bot.
I have written about the importance of authenticity in the debates about generative AI, and “authentic” has been named by Merriam-Webster as its word of the year for last year. I predict that “immersive” might be a contender in the years to come.
Meta Platforms Inc has bet big on representing the metaverse as a place for workplace training and brainstorming. This is all part of the education dividend in an “augmented” world being promised by Meta, as its global affairs president Nick Clegg outlined in a LinkedIn post earlier last year.
Sondre Kvam, co-founder and chief executive officer of Naer, a mixed reality workplace app which was selected to be part of the launch of Meta’s Quest 3 virtual headset, told me that “Avatar technologies seem to be frog-leaping each other every other week. Mixed reality workplaces have the potential to foster greater productivity than their hybrid and single location counterparts.”
The global virtual reality market is also projected to grow from US$19 billion last year to US$166 billion by 2030, global market research firm Fortune Business Insights said.
At the heart of any investment in workplace technology is the desire to improve productivity. Naer shows how AI producers are pitching their products on a continuing rise in hybrid, remote or “mixed reality” workplaces. They are suggesting that you would be able to visit your office as an avatar, just as you use teleconferencing, but that it would be far more engaging. This could be a significant antidote to “Zoom fatigue” — or it could be another version of the same old new technology promises.
We do not know yet — and yes, I realize I am being a contrarian here. The metaverse has been slow to take hold, and Meta’s embrace of it — to the point of changing its name from Facebook — so far has drawn more critics than supporters. Yet I, for one, see it as a longer-term gamble worth taking, as generations brought up on touchscreens and gaming enter the workplace.
AI is poised to have a particularly big impact around talent acquisition and job searches. Interestingly, the apprenticeship group Multiverse, founded by Euan Blair — son of former British prime minister Tony Blair — is all about this new realm of digital possibility. From chatbots to metaverse and Slack channels to LinkedIn, it all has to be navigated and negotiated, and not just by white collar workers, either. The most interesting of all the startups I have come across is Upwage, an employment platform for hourly wage workers in the US. “We care about two things: wage and commute,” Upwage co-founder Diana Tsai told me. “Our obsession was always to disrupt a very outdated and inefficient job search and application process for hourly workers, but also how amazing it would be if we could build an AI interviewer that skipped the entire application process and enabled workers to instantly interview with employers. When ChatGPT arrived, we had the opportunity to combine our search-based engine with the employer side product.”
Upwage’s “Super Screener,” launched last month, aims to save companies US$336,000 a year, while also providing candidate-convenient, 24/7 screening.
“We’d be talking to hourly workers who don’t have time to interview except for on the weekends. When recruiters aren’t working on the weekend, the Super Screener is,” Tsai said.
A caveat here, too: There are very real concerns that using AI to automate recruiting and hiring would effectively automate bias. It is a complex problem, but the technology is only progress if that does not happen.
In the end, business loves nothing better than a new market, and AI is packed to the rafters with possibility. Yes — it is complicated. Humans need to learn to use the technology which might, in fact, make their jobs obsolete — at least, that is what Elon Musk said. “There will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want a job,” he told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
I am betting that Roy Bahat is right. We will become proficient at using AI, and humans at work are not done yet.
Julia Hobsbawm is a columnist for Bloomberg Work Shift.
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