April 26, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way businesses operate. As its use becomes more widespread, leaders need to understand how this technology works and what its future role may be.
Key takeaways:
- Generative AI — which creates original material such as text — has the potential to disrupt business operations across many industries.
- The emergence of generative AI tools has altered many expectations on what sort of tasks can be automated.
- While there are fears of jobs either being lost or changed radically, history shows that there’s no guarantee AI automation will cause widespread job displacement.
Overview
There’s a new hot topic among leaders in the business world. Generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that can create original material such as images, music, or text, has only recently come to public attention but has already shown the potential to thoroughly disrupt business operations across fields and industries.
“There’s shock and amazement that these tools have progressed as quickly as they have,” says Muir Macpherson, partner, global human capital analytics at Aon. “Developments just over the past six or nine months have caught everyone by surprise, and those surprises haven’t slowed down.”
While the effect of AI technologies such as Open AI’s GPT-3 and -4 on the future of work remains uncertain, understanding the function of generative AI in business as it stands now and how it’s being used can help leaders strategize effectively.
In Depth
Accessibility to AI has increased for businesses of all sizes, offering new opportunities to drive innovation and optimize operations.
“With these foundational models, artificial intelligence has become democratized,” says Christopher Blackburn, senior data scientist, Human Capital Solutions at Aon.
But in tandem with all the excitement, leaders and employees are anxious about the potential consequences AI can have for business, including producing false or faulty content and changing or removing jobs.