How AI is Transforming The Workplace - The Good & The Bad

• By Sana Vohra
• 23-06-2021
• Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for quite some time now but the implementation of AI tools had been limited till the world was harrowed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the lockdown that was ensued because of it led to a precipitous change from people commuting to their workplace daily to people working from home.

Till the last few years, AI was involved in other aspects of our life such as navigation apps finding us the most efficient route, Spotify recommending us songs according to our playlists, Alexa helping us set up our schedule, or Siri responding to our questions with sarcastic remarks. But now, AI has entered our workplace and is slowly revolutionizing every aspect of it.

Workplace Feat. Artificial Intelligence
Businesses in every sector have by now adopted AI in some form or the other. While some enterprise owners are reluctant to utilize AI for their business, others have quickly invested in AI as it is indeed an investment that will keep on giving.

But the unforeseen plight brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the use of AI tools and technology in every business sector – small or multinational. Machine learning and AI have experienced exponential growth, development, and usage since 2020. So, what areas of your workplace is AI transforming, and how? Do all transformations have a positive impact or are there any negative impacts? Read further to know more.

How AI Has Affected the Human Resources Management
Till now, people working for tech companies have been exposed to AI and are utilizing it to the best of their abilities. But with the pandemic, non-tech companies and organizations have also started using AI especially to streamline HR management. The work of HR has never been this easy with the implementation of tools and technology.

Recruitment & Onboarding
AI-enabled tools are now used by many companies to screen through the multitude of candidate resumes as well as take their psychometric tests. These AI tools are not only cost-effective but also save a lot of time as they thoroughly analyze answers and give out accurate test results for the recruiter to easily choose the best candidate without needing to go through each candidate's test sheet manually.

The tools are designed in a way that they also analyze the candidate through the webcam to ensure no cheating is involved. These online assessment tools give data-driven results and are surprisingly cheaper than conducting an on-paper test. When a new employee is hired, a systematic onboarding process is to be provided by the HR but with the AI-based chatbot using NLP (Natural Language Processing) to guide the new hire settle into their job role by answering the employees’ questions in simple human language.

How AI Improves the Workplace
While a lot of people believe that AI will replace humans and we all be left jobless, let us assure you that it is just a misconception. AI does not replace humans but instead, it eliminates the busy repetitive work for us saving us a lot of time. As AI does the time-consuming repetitive work for us, leaving us to do what we do best – tasks that require creativity and interaction with other humans.

AI also reduces errors caused by humans by using smart algorithms which are created by humans. Although the human brain has abilities that are beyond machines, we are not perfect. Let's face it! We can't store accurate data of all our past situations, actions, and results and assess the probability of each of those occurring. Making optimal data-driven decisions or deriving results based on various probabilities is not possible for us.

Hence, AI does that job for us, and with accurate data-driven results making our work easier. Although this doesn't apply to everything though with machine learning and NLP, AI is growing rapidly and we don't know what the future holds. If Siri can answer you back with her witty sarcasm, the future of AI is wide and ever-evolving.

AI Feat. Negative Impacts
The majority of you will think of an apocalypse caused by machines as they became smarter than humans and decided to destroy the human species. Sci-Fi movies have portrayed machines in such a way and we can’t help but think of them as mankind’s destroyer. Even Elon Musk once tweeted “Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

While AI if in the wrong hands can be extremely dangerous, creating AI tools is also costly. And with the usage of AI, humans become comparatively lazier in regards to work as they start depending on the machines to do their work. Although AI surely makes our work easier by saving us time and other resources, it also reduces job prospects in certain fields creating an issue for unemployment.

Unlike humans, machines don't have emotions and they cannot make decisions unless they are data-driven. Today, AI has reached a point that it is constantly learning new things developing on its own by taking in more data and analyzing it. This can be dangerous if no restrictions are attached to it. As Elon Musk once said:

“AI doesn’t have to be evil to destroy humanity – if AI has a goal and humanity just happens to come in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it, no hard feelings.” Find a software development company for the best AI solution.