A.I. Will Eventually Impact Your Job & Workplace Life — What You Need To Know (& Why)
Artificial intelligence isn't coming; it's here. What does that mean for your job?
PNW Production from Pexels, PhonlamaiPhoto from Getty Images There’s a torrent of daily information and previews of situations related to the generative AI (artificial intelligence) realm.
This article focuses on what you could expect in your work situation for now so you can prepare for it. You may want to brush up on the basics of artificial intelligence before we get started.
You'll likely have little say about the onslaught as your work continues to be influenced by generative AI. Though you can’t control many of these external aspects, you do have personal and professional choices for learning and applications.
How Generative AI Waves May Affect You At Work
According to a Goldman Sachs study, about two-thirds of current occupations could be affected by generative AI within the current decade. Algorithms could take over about a quarter to a half of current work.
Three matters that can relate to and influence how AI impacts your work:
- The external variables, such as the makeup and status of the workforce, that affect your immediate and future situations are difficult to predict neatly, but attending to your particular situation will be helpful.
- The fluidity of the post-Covid workforce, including shifts in values, working arrangements, and motivations, as well as employer policies and productivity concerns, create further dynamism.
- The risks and benefits continue in motion. Risks include the tremendous environmental and production costs of generative AI and its producers’ temptations to monetize it. Quality control issues, such as bias and misinformation, are contained in the inner workings of trillions of variables in the so-called black box of large language models (LLM), on which AI is based.
- Benefits include savings in time, as well as improved focus and productivity, by using iterated prompts; they elicit increasing depth and breadth from ChatGPT. Routine, rote work is minimized. In addition, there is excitement, worthwhile challenge, and stimulation from these new, constantly evolving tools and processes
Given all these variables and considerations in motion, not to mention your own complex life, predictions of any kind are iffy. Whether from economists, consultants, AI generators, or users’ experience, they are neither static nor always clear. As a result, your own resilient choreography, attention to your situation, context, goals, critical thinking, and continued lifelong learning and relearning are your best protections and opportunities. It all keeps your brain vital as well!
Changes in the workplace:
Generative AI can produce initial versions of almost everything in text, design, videos, voice, or graphic form. Specific examples run from resumes to legal briefs. As a result, knowledge workers especially are likely to spend more time editing and checking for “hallucinations” than creating from scratch. Though it can’t do basic, hands-on research, AI makes very rapid sense of huge amounts of information beyond the mental capacity of human beings.
Since worldwide experts are working on ongoing AI development, accustom yourself to dynamism as continuing daily changes emerge and evolve, much more so than in previous technological shifts.
Choices and opportunities as generative AI unfolds and relates to your situation:
To avoid how social media quickly seduced many users and had some unanticipated negative outcomes, guardrails may provide viable boundaries, when not manipulated. Take care to sustain your good judgment and interpersonal relationships. The ease and immediacy of ChatGPT can easily replace “self-expression” and other communication.
However attractive and accessible the LLM scrapings of the huge range of sources of extant material created by others, they are not actually your product, however much you edit, check and master your own prompt engineering.
As you embrace online change, you could miss the delights of serendipitous encounters and open-ended, creative playfulness of colleagues, even the awe and excitement of individual discoveries and conversational explorations.
Consider and keep attending to the challenges and opportunities in generative AI and it’s “children.” One process is how you will create the right proportion for yourself and your situation between practical and soulful use of AI, its knowns and unknowns. Both are crucial for doing good work rapidly and authentically, for communicating effectively, and for having meaningful, worthwhile work relationships.
Some of the many changes can be discussed now. Some predictions are possible, others imagined. Be prepared for coming opportunities and surprises if you want to ride the waves well.
Since you can be the constant and choreographer in this continuing dance of change, important aspects of the process are in your hands, for now. The rapid development of generative AI may outstrip the capacity to control it. Who will manage this technology, and to what ends, is to be determined. Will you be the choreographer of the dance of change, succumb to playing catchup, or put your position at some risk by being passive or indifferent?
Your key to a fluid, promising dance is your resilience.
Ruth Schimel Ph.D. is a career and life management consultant and author of the Choose Courage series on Amazon. She guides clients in accessing their strengths and making viable visions for current and future work. See the first chapter of her seventh book Happiness and Joy in Work: Preparing for Your Future available without charge.