How AI and Machine learning is changing business for good

Every industrial revolution has created uncertainty around the future of humans in work. After all, humans have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to have work become part of their identities. By Anthony Wheeler

How AI and Machine learning is changing business

Societies have similarly evolved around the relationship between humans and their work. The thought of technology detaching humans and societies from work over a relatively brief period of time is indeed unsettling. Hollywood and fiction writers have created dystopic scenes of futures where humans and machines battle against each other for survival.

Yet every industrial revolution has created new jobs and industries that replaced technologically displaced jobs and industries. There are many good reasons, however, to believe that the Fourth Industrial Revolution – defined by automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning technologies – will not follow a similar path as previous industrial revolutions.

It is likely that even new jobs created by those technologies will be fewer than the jobs eliminated by those technologies. The most aggressive predictions give humans a 50-50 probability of having all human work replaced by technology within 100 years.

Whether humans completely get displaced from work by technology or simply continue to work with technology, the technological advancements around automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will benefit businesses and customers in myriad ways.

The reason for the adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies displacing humans from work comes down to cost and efficiency. Simply, jobs requiring highly repetitive tasks and physical movements, as well as jobs that require little autonomous decision making, can more efficiently be completed by machines at a lower cost than by human employees.

Machines make fewer mistakes, do not need breaks or vacations, and can meet the same or higher quality standards that humans can produce for those types of jobs.

This means that businesses reduce their costs while increasing production and customers benefit from higher quality services or products, perhaps even at a lower price.

We already have seen technology displace many manufacturing industries. Robots on an assembly line create higher quality cars, for instance, at a lower cost than humans can create. Cafeteria-style restaurants, convenience stores, and pharmacies in China already provide similar quality products and services using almost nearly all machines instead of humans.

As companies gain efficiencies in the production of services and goods through the use of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, those companies create more value. Economies will grow so long as businesses and consumers continue to purchase goods and services.

Societies, should governments adapt to changes in how businesses operate, benefit from the technological advancements associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The COVID-19 brought another dimension to the discussion of how technology will benefit businesses, employees, and customers. Country lockdowns and limiting social contact among friends, families, and citizens actually highlighted that humans do not just require social interaction but thrive from social interactions.

Call it a paradox. The more technology we adopt, the more human we become.

For businesses, this opens opportunities to engage in strategic nuance. What products and services can machines complete in ways that add value to specific segments of a market? Conversely, what products and services can humans complete in ways that add similar value to specific segments of a market. We need not think that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will create the dichotomy of humans or machines. Instead, it will create a continuum of humans through machines.

Businesses will also benefit from these technological advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in perhaps an unexpected way. As machines increasingly replace humans, businesses have opportunities to unleash the creativity of those humans to help solve problems or create new things.

Imagine a world where humans no longer needed to work in order to live a comfortable life and can instead allow their passions and interests to guide their daily activities. Instead of worrying about a joyless job that merely brings home enough income to pay for the basics of one’s life, people can pursue activities that bring them intrinsic joy.

One might paint, while another might write a novel. Perhaps one finds joy again in making music. Maybe groups of like-minded citizens meet to debate big ideas. Such is how philosophers are made.

Perhaps it is the technological advancements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that allow for a second Renaissance of human creativity.

This assumes that governments will deploy some type of universal basic income scheme that benefits citizens from the massive wealth that companies will accrue from technological advancements.

We should not delude ourselves into thinking that these transitions and transformations will smoothly occur. Nor should we assume that they will occur uniformly across industries or countries. Inequalities within and between societies could widen if nations do not grapple with the implications of technologies replacing human work.

As with many instances throughout human history, technology itself is not the problem. In fact, technologies almost always improve human life. It is how we as humans and members of societies use those technologies.

For businesses, the technologies will open limitless opportunities, as long as businesses and societies do not use the technologies to leave behind people.

Written by Anthony Wheeler

Anthony Wheeler is Dean of Business Administration, Professor of Management at Widener University and co-author with M. Ronald Buckley of HR without people? Industrial evolution in the age of automation, AI and Machine Learning.