CEOs: Your employees are already using AI to do their jobs. What are your plans for AI?

Employees are already using AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and Midjourney to do some work.

They use it at work (on the network), on the phone, and at home. nevertheless AI is not yet fully integrated into all software used within the workplace. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your employees aren’t using AI to do their jobs faster and more efficiently.

While many leaders are focused on incorporating AI into their products and services, they also need to think about how AI can be used in their day-to-day business today and in the future. What is your company’s AI plan?

Create and communicate AI usage policies to employees

If you don’t have an AI usage policy in place, the first step is to meet with your legal, IT, and HR teams to navigate this process. It is important to have basic guidelines for employees to follow. Your IT team may have strong opinions about which AI tools your company should and shouldn’t use. Legal teams can raise serious concerns about issues ranging from who owns intellectual property generated from AI to prohibited information legal teams do not want to enter into AI tools. There is a nature. Please don’t wait. Let’s get ahead of this situation now.

Best practices for using AI in the workplace

Consider the following best practices when using AI at work:

Use AI properly: AI should only be used for tasks that it was designed for and that are within its capabilities. Do not use for tasks that require human judgment or decision making.

Confirm the information: Information provided by AI must be verified before use to ensure its accuracy and reliability. This is one of the most important aspects for employees to use the output of AI at work. AI is not always correct and can produce consistent but inaccurate information. Most of the time, you can get your CEO to send you an uplifting e-mail communication to your employees at Christmas, but if you’re asked to write a technical white paper on an advanced microprocessor, you’re in trouble. can occur. Validation is very important.

Protect confidential information. AI should not be used to generate or provide sensitive information such as personal or financial data, employee emails, employee names or company names without taking appropriate security measures.

Maintain professional communication: AI should be used in a professional manner and its response should be respectful and appropriate for the workplace.

Monitor and evaluate AI use: Use of AI should be regularly monitored and evaluated to identify any unintended consequences or biases.

ethical considerations

Any use of AI should be guided by ethical considerations such as:

Fairness and non-discrimination: AI should not be used to discriminate against individuals or groups based on race, gender, age, religion, or other personal characteristics.

Privacy and data protection: AI must be used in a way that respects individual privacy rights and protects personal data.

Transparency and accountability: AI responses should be transparent, and their output should be auditable and explainable. Those responsible for using AI must take responsibility for how they use AI.

Evaluate every role in your company

The next step is to identify roles that can be automated using AI. It is important to analyze the tasks performed by each role and identify repetitive, rule-based, content-based, and data-driven tasks.

Assessment of the impact of AI on roles will evolve over time, with some roles being impacted sooner than others.

1. Evaluate currently available AI. Consider that employees are using AI tools available within the public domain, with or without company knowledge. For example, evaluate how you can use ChatGPT today to improve your productivity. (0-2 years later)
2. Evaluate the tools you currently use to run your business. Now is a good time to work with software and tool vendors and service providers to understand the AI ​​roadmap. Their roadmap will help you better understand how AI will integrate into existing or future productivity tools used within your organization. The scope ranges from financial systems, co-pilot coding, corporate email, to human resources systems. (2-5 years later)
3. Identify the tasks and activities associated with each role. First, make a list of all tasks and activities performed by each role in your organization.
4. Evaluate each task’s suitability for automation. After identifying the tasks and activities associated with each role, assess their suitability for automation. Consider the complexity of the task, how long it will take to complete, and the potential impact of automation.
5. Evaluate the cost savings and benefits of automation. Determine the potential cost savings and benefits of automating each task. This includes reduced labor costs, increased efficiency, increased accuracy, and more.
6. Consider the impact on your employees. Evaluate the impact of automation on employees in each role. This could include job losses, reassignment of responsibilities, opportunities for upskilling, etc.
7. Prioritize automation roles. Prioritize roles that are most suitable for automation based on the results of the evaluation. Consider potential cost savings and benefits, and employee impact.
8. Implementation plan: Create a plan for implementing automation in the identified roles. This may include choosing the right AI technology, training employees on new tasks, and providing support to employees affected by the change.

It is important to note that the evaluation of roles for automation should not focus solely on eliminating jobs. Rather, it is about improving efficiency, productivity and accuracy while providing opportunities for employee upskilling and reskilling.

Evaluate each role for the impact AI will have on it

One approach to understanding the impact of AI on each role is to try to predict how existing AI tools will impact each role, and ultimately each department. For example, you can list all the roles in your department and assess how AI impacts each role. Company rating systems range from simple to complex, preliminary to extensive.

The chart below summarizes the various AI impact role ratings within each department at the department level. Evaluate the impact of AI in years zero to two, and the impact of AI on departmental roles in years three to five.

Removed or rearranged work?

The impact of AI on specific roles and organizations will depend on your company’s needs. Whether a role is removed or reassigned should be fully evaluated by your organization.

Example 1: Software companies that use AI to develop more products, faster, are in the process of designing new products and creating product requirements that are “input” to AI, and verifying that AI outputs meet design requirements. You may choose to redeploy the engineers you work with.

Example 2: Marketing agencies using AI may choose to eliminate various roles within their company due to the significant productivity gains from using AI.

Do you need skilled workers with college degrees?

In a recent paper, “Generative AI At Work,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lindsey Raymond, and Danielle Li used data from 5,179 customer support agents to develop a generative AI-based conversational assistant stage We conducted a survey on the introduction of The study found that “AI-assistance disproportionately improves the performance of less-skilled and less-experienced workers on all productivity measures we consider. found that it helps descend the experience curve more quickly: treated agents with 2 months tenure perform similarly to untreated agents with 6 months or longer tenure will demonstrate.” In what other roles can AI level the playing field between less skilled and experienced workers and more skilled and experienced workers?

NBER’s “Generative AI At Work” study provides an interesting take on some of the research being done on roles within the workplace. It’s also an example of what each organization should do in terms of measuring productivity before and after introducing AI to different roles and departments.

CEOs still need highly educated and skilled workers, but growth forecasts may you may not need that much. The role of educated and skilled employees will lean toward becoming “AI guides” and performing “AI validation.” In other words, some people are meeting the AI’s requirements, while others are validating the AI’s output. In some cases, both tasks are performed.

Conclusion

I disagree with the notion put forward by the Center for Humanitarian Technology and Elon Musk that humans can practically or ethically control AI. Like humans rushing to develop AI, AI is unlikely to regulate or undo itself. The majority of individuals will use AI for their own benefit, whether to improve productivity or to benefit from AI. AI will have a huge impact on every role in the workplace, making it our new colleague and our new reality. With advances in AI showing no signs of slowing down and companies that don’t compete are already losing, CEOs have no choice but to join the race.

Joseph Hickman He has worked for various prominent technology companies such as Oracle Corp., Google LLC and Tesla Inc. Previous articles on SiliconANGLE include: So? “Dear Twitter Employees: Welcome to the new world.” He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Image: Joseph Hickman/Midjourney