Artificial Intelligence Takes a Hit

Artificial intelligence is disrupting the American workforce as it was expected to, but not nearly the way it was designed to. It turns out that many tasks are being eliminated, yet the robots they’re using to eliminate those tasks require a lot of babysitting. For some reason, simply having those once responsible for the eliminated tasks babysit the robots is not an option. Hence the reason why tech companies are turning to layoffs to resolve the ongoing problem.

This despite the precautions hurled out to the public before the AI rollout, and now major players are scrambling to figure out what went wrong.

I may have one reason. Through my research, I’ve come to learn that technology is only successful when it is a gradual introduction into the workforce. To this day, there is still a mixture of old and new digital tools being used to help companies function. Microsoft applications are still widely used to manage tasks and keep companies organized. Even with the proliferation of Google applications, Microsoft still rules in the workplace. As I like to reassure my clients, while more and more technology is replacing a lot of the old ways of doing things, there are still elements of the old ways the American workforce relies on to make things happen.

Artificial intelligence caught a lot of attention when it hit the marketplace. You can tell how fast AI changes were made simply by using the new search browsers available to the public. One day you log on to use these newly powered and advanced search engines to make basic searches, and the next day you come upon updates that can take a while to figure out.

Bottom line, AI has become too disruptive, too fast. We can look to history and remind ourselves of the challenges and disasters this can cause by reflecting on the Industrial Revolution, and how it had exploited children, led to long-term disabilities no one took the time to anticipate, and the long hours and painstakingly low pay workers were made to endure.

Is artificial intelligence a good idea? You bet, but the American workforce needs to stop thinking about capitalizing on every new discovery and become more deliberate and decisive about how to implement such huge changes.