Any change is usually received with a certain caution, if not “reluctance” and the appearance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) could not be less. What greater threat than a new technology that not only forces me to leave my routine, which in turn is my comfort zone, but also threatens to do my job better, faster and without stops? The first reaction is to defend yourself. Defend yourself from that which threatens your way of working, your way of earning your bread. What is perceived are two words that frighten anyone: On strike.
Given this disquisition, it is logical that there are detractors of this technology and that it suggests that people are redundant from the productive fabric, that they are more of a nuisance than a contributor. These detractors argue that people of a certain age (say 55 years and older) will be excluded from the labor market thanks to the incursion of AI.
And then there is another trend, another opinion, those who argue that AI can be an opportunity to address better jobs, not so manual or repetitive, but of much more value. They argue that people are perfectly prepared to face a danger like that of AI and that if these people can feel threatened by the appearance and implementation of this technology, they will react naturally.
But what makes one position or another gain strength? Without a doubt, people love our THE COMFORT ZONE. This word has its logic and if you are well paid for what you do, even more so because why change anything if I am fine as I am? That emotional, psychic space, where people, due to our good work, in some cases, over time in others, have placed us in that zone where we feel comfortable and which AI now threatens directly and aggressively because, in theory, I am superfluous. This is not helped by the way in which companies are perceived as ruthless machines that will opt for the highest productivity and where the employee has no opportunity.
Version 2.0 of that vision is one where the employee is not destroyed, but is repurposed to do different, higher-value tasks or even tasks that were once considered but not executed.
The labour market is complex, but we can make employees who see their comfort zone and their job threatened see that the interference of AI will be an opportunity for growth. On the other hand, companies have to understand that AI will be the opportunity to undertake actions that were not done before. The biggest cost for a company is usually its labour cost, and thanks to AI, it will now be able to use the experience and time of employees who previously did things of medium or low value, becoming “potentially productive” people.
The will to change has to come from both sides. If the employee does not want to change, nothing is achieved; and if the company only wants to save a few euros by destroying jobs to earn a little more, nothing is achieved. The important thing is to understand what AI does and what is the best we can get from it. We must stop seeing these acronyms as a threat and turn them into allies. Let us remember that one of the biggest complaints of management teams in SMEs is the Difficulty in tackling new projects due to their high salary costIf AI suddenly makes available to me a cost that I already have and that I can multiply to tackle those new projects… then that’s when we start to see light at the end of the tunnel.
I am firmly in favour of this. Because if my conclusion were “everyone unemployed” I would be contributing very little to society and even less to my companies. People will always be necessary, but at the same time people must have a mobile and dynamic mentality to understand that the “comfort zone” does not contribute anything to the “company-employee” binomial.
This is in the private sphere, but how would AI impact public employees? Unfortunately, not at all. They will not feel affected or threatened because we have been sold the idea that a public employee is not there to be productive, but to meet a citizen need.
AI does not threaten the jobs of civil servants, that is a fact. But let us play with hypotheses. Today, with the AI we have on the market and its evolution for the next five years, I would dare to say that some 800,000 civil servants (of the approximately 3 million existing today) could be redundant from the public model if AI strategies were implemented focused on carrying out tasks that are now done manually. The explanation is simple: Public Administration is not a production system like that of a private company through which it must have an expansion plan or that it must increase its turnover. It is simply a “country” model that it has adopted to provide employment for a part of the active population. It is not strictly necessary to ask whether I can lose weight or be stronger… that is not the objective. The objective is more political than productive and that is why nothing is going to happen in public administration.
In the private sector, mainly SMEs, they are going to have to take their employees and, with the help of technology, evangelize them so that they do those other high-value things with the time that AI will make available to them, and this can only be achieved in two ways: The worker has to want to evolve with technology And we companies have to be willing to see the excellent opportunity that is presented to us and take advantage of the resources to do valuable tasks that make it grow.
This really all boils down to a debate, with two theses. One very comfortable one is to accept the idea that AI will indeed send us all to the unemployment line. In my opinion, this is what I would call the “comfortable thesis.” Whatever happens, I don’t lose. But why don’t I lose? Easy. If what I say happens, the self-satisfied phrase “I told you so” appears. And if by chance AI doesn’t send me to the unemployment line, then that’s also great.
I bet that AI will generate two sequential movements: the first is the generation of a peak where it may seem that jobs are being destroyed, but in the medium term, the second movement will come where markets readjust because we all realize that the surplus produced by AI can do other (great) things. And there is the bilateral responsibility between companies and employees. The former will have the need to generate new tasks so that these people can work. Mind you! Not out of pity, I am talking about tasks that are actually of value to the company. And people will have to take on the management of change regarding what they did until now and evolve according to the market.
AI will create many gaps where we can hire many employees to do things that I would like to do now but can’t because of the labor costs. But if there is concern and innovation, we can retrain employees to increase turnover.
Neither all white, nor all black… I’m betting on a reasonably intelligent grey.
Signed: Enrique Rodríguez Ciurana. CEO Syntax Business Solutions