Every few months it seems another study warns that a big slice of the workforce is about to lose their jobs because of artificial intelligence. Four years ago, an Oxford University study predicted 47% of jobs could be automated by 2033. Even the near-term outlook has been quite negative: A 2016 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said 9% of jobs in the 21 countries that make up its membership could be automated. And in January 2017, McKinsey’s research arm estimated AI-driven job losses at 5%. My own firm released a survey recently of 835 large companies (with an average revenue of $20 billion) that predicts a net job loss of between 4% and 7% in key business functions by the year 2020 due to AI.
How Companies Are Already Using AI
A survey by Tata Consultancy Services reveals that while some jobs have been lost to machine intelligence, that’s not the major way companies are using AI today. Companies are more likely to be using AI to improve computer-to-computer tasks while employing the same number of people. The 170-year-old news service Associated Press offers a case in point. In 2013, demand for quarterly earnings stories was insatiable, and staff reporters could barely keep up. So that year, AP began working with an AI firm to train software to automatically write short earnings news stories. By 2015, AP’s AI system was writing 3,700 quarterly earnings stories – 12 times the number written by its business reporters. No AP business journalist lost a job. In fact, AI has freed up the staff to write more in-depth stories on business trends. That’s the next trend in AI, and one more businesses should try to emulate.