AI will change the way we work
I remember only three times in my life when technology genuinely left me awestruck – The first time was when, as a child, I saw color TVs. I remembered standing outside a TV store to see what the Olympics looked like in color. The second time when the internet first came into our lives. The connection cost some 10,000 rupees for 500 hours, and it would make screeching sounds before it connected. There was so much awe when one said Hi in a chat room to some girl in Prague and when she said hi in real time. It was surreal. And the third time it happened was straight 3 decades later. In the last 2 months. On Mid-journey. And Chatgpt. Both siblings from a common parent – Generative AI. The first generated images on the text prompt. And the other seemed to have answers to whatever questions we threw at it. A tech that made Google look primitive. And the Metaverse was thinking – Hey, this was supposed to be my show and my year to shine.
AI is not hype. It’s real.
Well, this stuff is real, unlike the Metaverse, which is still untested and years away. It’s happening. It’s delivering. It’s transforming. And it’s disruptive.
It’s predicted that 90% of all content generated online will be through AI by 2025. That’s very, very fast. Artificial General Intelligence was supposed to be decades away. But it’s here already – knocking at our doors. Chatgpt took just 5 days to reach 1 million people. Facebook took 10 months and Instagram 2.5 months. Today, Chatgpt is writing copy, making resumes, drafting an email, compiling information, making report summaries, writing code, and doing research – pretty much delivering as your AI pilot, the way Microsoft positioned it. 50% of the companies surveyed mentioned that Chatgpt is already replacing jobs. 66% are using it to write code. 58% are using it for copywriting and content. 57% for customer support and 52% for documentation. 90% of the employers are happy with Chatgpt’s work. Let’s go beyond chatgpt.
AI is transforming and disrupting many facets of work life.
AI is not just Chatgpt. Dall-E and Mid Journey and their many copycat cousins are transforming Art. Generating images rendered in illustrative, photo-realistic, painting, or whatever style you want. The next in line is synthetic voiceovers – rapidly upending the Voice artist ecosystem. AI-generated voices are commonly seen on a lot of social content. Then there are AI-generated Apps that will generate digital photos of humans from scratch – No model fees or copyrights to be paid. E-Com sites are already adopting these for their products! Move over, photographers. Further, some Apps will generate logos, even social media posts with all sizes and ratios for all platforms at the click of a button. Lastly, Text-to-video is around the corner, and I have seen initial prototypes of brainstorming apps that help generate advertising ideas.
A lot of these applications need human supervision for final deployment. But it IS reducing the churn at a junior level to generate primary output. So writing basic code, base content, a plain report, or an acceptable voice – all these will be done by AI. And the way the industry is progressing, human supervision will add many layers of correction and nuance to the base output over the next few months. AI will only learn faster, and the next output iteration will only improve.
So how will it change work?
As I mentioned above, laborious production and generation will be automated. Nuance, perspective, and personal experience will flavor differentiated work. Senior jobs will be to guide AI output (as against the output of junior folks). Take Mid-journey, for instance. The vision to generate an image/visualize is always critical. Till yesterday, it took a skillful artist to bring it to life. Today, the same senior artist needs to learn how to prompt AI. As a result, ai will handle production 10 times faster. The same will be true for a lot of other jobs. Most of these technologies are exposed to people for trial, and most people are just having fun. But big enterprises will embed these technologies in their products. A generative text-to-image model will sit inside Adobe products. AI pilot will sit inside Mircosoft enterprise products. You may see a lot of AI inside Meta’s products like Whatsapp and even Facebook. When this happens, the AI tech will move to commercial grade.
So does it spell doomsday?
A quick look at history tells us that every change has had an adaptive human response. Sure, AI learns. But humans can learn too. They learned to transform with the age of engines, electricity, mobility, computers, the internet, and much more. So yes.. jobs will go. They will just be replaced by new ones. Jobs will go. Employability for humans won’t. We will continue to rely on the one skill that has made us the most dominant specie on this planet. Adaptability. So bring it on, AI. The human race is ready to pivot, as it always has.
Read Also : How programmatic advertising helps brands and marketers do more with less
About the author:
Sangram Surve, Managing Director, Think WhyNot