Are humans useless in the AI workspace?

[0:09] hello welcome to ai decoded we talk about ai and how it's going to change our jobs constantly but [0:17] here's the honest truth most of us don't yet fully understand what that will mean to the future of [0:23] work we know it's coming perhaps faster than many of us expected the question i ask my clients is [0:33] if an ai could take over all of your team's tasks who would you keep and why that question [0:43] is strategic and the answer matters to me not just intellectually but because i have two daughters [0:50] at home they're five and nine and right now as you can see they feel invincible but i keep wondering [0:59] what is the world of work they will step into we need to build a future where humans matter more [1:07] not less it's not about whether ai replaces us of course there will be some jobs that do go but [1:16] how we redesign the workplace [1:17] around it what does that actually look like in practice in this program we're going to try and [1:22] make sense of all that we've brought together three guests who have talked about this subject [1:27] more than most bernard marr writes about ai and business for forbes he's advised some of the [1:33] world's largest organizations on how to use ai effectively ella hafermalz is an associate professor [1:40] at the fryer university in amsterdam she spent the last two years studying what happens when employees [1:48] start using ai tools at work and of course our very own colleague priya lakhani ceo of century tech [1:54] the ai education company welcome to the three of you thanks for being with us um i'm going to start [2:00] with you let me put to you the premise of our program okay how do we create an ai workplace [2:06] of the future in which humans still matter i love the fact that you start our program with the most [2:13] profound question christian just that's what we're all asking that's what it's about okay [2:19] look the way in which we do this is i think we have to think about look if everyone has ai across [2:25] the board it is going to be the humans that create the difference and so how are we now going to up [2:32] skill the people within the workforce so that they can thrive in that environment now if you think [2:39] about all of the changes that are taking place and the companies that are you know seeing changes [2:44] with ai they're reporting positive changes what's really interesting is those changes take place [2:49] with tasks you know your role and your job if you think about it it's about repetitive tasks [2:54] automating tasks but what it's struggling with still is that sort of strategic direction and [3:00] that judgment and so i think companies need to be thinking about you know how much are we actually [3:05] investing in innovation how much are we investing in our people to have the time to be skilled in [3:10] this area so that we can then differentiate ourselves and humans will then still be able [3:13] to flourish in an age where we have this sort of ai augmented workplace bernard let's fast [3:19] forward to 2030 the beginning of the next decade how widely do you think ai will have changed the [3:26] average job help us understand that first of all and how you think it will reshape the average [3:30] workplace yes so this is what i try to help companies understand and what i'm seeing is that [3:38] ai will completely transform our jobs for me ai is a superpower that will all [3:44] we we can all use it's almost like having a genie on your shoulder that allows you to [3:49] do pretty much anything or at least a lot of tasks that previously you needed someone else [3:55] to help you with and for me there are three types of ai that will transform our work in the future [4:02] the first one is generative ai so we are used to chat boards like chat gpt and claude and and [4:08] gemini and we use them to answer questions and if you think about a financial advisor for example [4:13] they can now offload the data analysis to the chat board they can draft [4:19] reports [4:20] and they can hopefully spend a bit more time building interpersonal relationships with their [4:24] clients then we have agentic ai so the ai that can do things that can operate software that can [4:33] look things up on the internet fill out forms and i do those repetitive jobs that priya's talking [4:39] about the jobs that you do again and again and again in the same format exactly and ibm is a [4:44] good example they have automated a lot of their hr tasks all the repetitive tasks so if you work [4:49] in hr today you actually want to think about how ai is transforming the company how we need to train [4:56] retrain our people rethink our jobs and actually you get bogged down by answering the same questions [5:02] again about pension contributions about um vacation time and so on so we can give ai those [5:11] jobs and these ais can now fill out forms they can search data for you um and then we have physical ai [5:17] and this is another kind of software that i use a lot [5:19] component so which so far we've talked about all the cognitive work physical [5:24] robots are getting better as well they're starting to understand the [5:28] physical world much better we now have the emergence of world models so [5:32] humanoid robots for example they can be trained by simply watching videos of how [5:38] we do things on YouTube they can learn from that right and and and all of those [5:44] women tasks will change right but you've said that if we were to look at where [5:50] we are right now it's not necessarily that AI is replacing the jobs instantly [5:55] it's that AI is hollowing them out in what sense so what AI does it will [6:01] perform the task that we actually don't necessarily like so one part of the job [6:06] the repetitive tasks okay is I work with a company and their chief AI officer [6:12] actually went into the organization to ask everyone what are the things you [6:15] don't like in your job that you would love the AI to do for [6:20] you? [6:20] because we in our jobs we're not running out of things to do they're not we will [6:25] never run out of questions and problems to solve what we get distracted by [6:30] day-to-day is all the things the form-filling the the the things that [6:36] take up our time so in a positive sense there could be a freedom that this [6:40] creates to focus on more creative parts of the business exactly what I believe [6:44] is that it will make our work more human and actually more enjoyable because we [6:49] don't get distracted [6:50] by all the things that we almost shouldn't waste our amazing human [6:54] potential to to work on well that feels like a good place to bring in Ella [6:58] um because your research Ella has taken you to very different companies in the [7:03] Netherlands and it reveals that employees are already using these large [7:07] language models in their work in ways that managers can't easily see in what [7:14] ways are they using them yeah so we've been studying chat GPT since 2022 so [7:21] just after it came out we thought we have to look at this and we started [7:24] talking to people already then about how are you using this in your work and we [7:28] found out that they were playing around with it first of all at home using it [7:32] for all the silly kind of things that maybe you're familiar with you know make [7:35] me look a different way write a poem Etc but then they started figuring out hey [7:39] this could be useful for work and so unbeknownst to managers without kind of [7:43] approval they started to use this technology for brainstorming for search [7:49] as a kind of replacement for Google for [7:50] structuring information polishing text all these different ways that they were [7:55] just letting it creep into their everyday work and it can sound kind of [7:59] innocent in these little parts but it has bigger consequences like what well [8:05] what we found for example in our interviews is people were so happy to [8:10] not have to bother their colleagues with questions so you know previously I'd [8:14] have to go and ask my manager or I'd have to bring in my business partner who [8:17] knows this framework but now I don't need them I can just ask chat GPT [8:21] and so they were happy to not have to find out where their employees are or [8:26] their colleagues you know how it is with hybrid working you're never quite sure [8:29] who's where so easy convenient ask chat GPT so that organic self-learning on the [8:36] job the the exchange of information between colleagues which which is [8:39] creative within an industry you worry that that element is being lost yeah so [8:44] we see this as a real challenge for particularly managers who might not [8:49] realize that this is happening this erosion [8:51] of the social ties between people and that's a lot of what organizations are [8:55] for we're meant to share knowledge and learn from one another and also check [9:00] the quality and accuracy of what's coming out of these interactions you see [9:04] what L is describing there Priya is that this is already happening organically [9:09] one employee at a time and if we're to start thinking strategically about this [9:13] rather than asking the question or is it going to replace my job this is the sort [9:16] of thing that CEOs and managers are going to have to get a grip off how is [9:20] it working to the benefit of the company how is it working to the benefit of the [9:21] company and are we all using it in the same way in the same direction yeah well [9:25] I think that in the last year I've certainly seen a lot of businesses [9:28] around the world talking about having some form of plan some form of policy [9:33] and a strategy because it's not just the sorts of ways of just using something to [9:37] maybe brainstorm instead of going to a colleague you know you can't be putting [9:41] personal data or commercially sensitive data into tools that you have a personal [9:45] account for at home and so there I think most CEOs over the last 12 to 18 months [9:51] this AI thing we have to do something and what was so interesting is that because of [9:56] this program actually quite a few people will reach out on LinkedIn or write to me or meet me [10:01] and say and they're CEOs of like 50 250 companies right so they'll come up to you and they'll say [10:07] Priya we're using AI and because I'm nice right I'll smile and be really encouraging and say [10:14] that's amazing so in the back of my head I'm just thinking what are you talking about and [10:17] actually when you when you dig deeper what you find is they've bought co-pilot [10:22] licenses for all of their staff and they're just finishing off their emails [10:26] using AI whereas I think what we'll start to see because you know people are savvy [10:32] to this now how come and we covered this on this program Christian very deeply the [10:37] MIT report that said that you know 95 of organizations aren't getting return on [10:41] investment from AI and then there was another report by McKinsey actually one [10:44] percent of companies are getting return on investment companies are now [10:48] desperate they're saying how can I be part of the one percent okay two [10:52] so fast thoughts before we talk about how we adapt to this um if you want an [10:56] example of what Priya's talking about there Bernard um the idea that CEOs think they're [11:02] using it when really they're not you only need to go and look at some of the job ads currently [11:07] on LinkedIn 100 and what we are still seeing is jobs the drop descriptions almost of the last [11:16] century as how we've always done jobs instead of thinking how will AI truly change our [11:22] jobs um I think you talked about coding uh coding now Anthropix Claude can perform they they use [11:33] they use code to automate 80 of their coding tasks so the jobs need to change and what we [11:41] need to do is we need to fundamentally rethink our jobs and how we as humans bring the best of [11:47] what we have is the strategic thinking is the creativity and creative problem solving emotional [11:54] skills building connections with other people these things AI can't do and we can bring and [12:00] what humans actually need to do is they need to be able to delegate effectively to the AI and what [12:06] I'm seeing is that jobs are being elevated and almost frontline employees are now becoming [12:11] managers of a of a set of AI tools that will work for them and they need to oversee a new [12:20] layer of employees almost um listen I'm I want to [12:25] to how then we we train for the jobs of the future I want to play this clip this is the CEO of Black [12:31] Rock massive company Larry Fink talking to Simon Jack our economics editor this week some of the [12:37] things that he says might just surprise you AI is going to create enormous amount of jobs most [12:43] people are not focusing on part of the letter that I write about how many jobs is going to be [12:48] creating related to electricians and welders and and plumbers so we should be telling our kids to [12:53] be electricians rather than lawyers or fund managers [12:55] if you think about um how the average worker has been portrayed on television generally the average [13:06] plumber had their overalls or their pants you know hanging below their waistline overweight [13:14] we need to embrace that those type of jobs are just as good for many people post World War II [13:23] we built a foundation of education and we said to all the young people go to [13:29] college go to college go to college and we probably overdid it and so many people who probably should [13:36] not have gone into banking or media or law probably should have been a great worker and with their [13:44] hands and and we need to now rebalance that approach so Ella he doesn't think that people [13:55] should spend inordinate amount and inordinate amounts of money on a university degree right [14:01] but we've already established that [14:02] there's not a job that is AI proof that's a myth so how do you skill for a job and a future that we [14:12] can't yet define yeah it's a great question it's one that we bring to our students so I teach a [14:17] course within our international business administration program and in this course [14:21] we specifically ask who am I in the age of AI and this is really something that students also need [14:27] to be engaged in this conversation there's no point in saying don't use a or AI it's a part of [14:33] science what we need to help them think about it similar to what Bernard was saying is what do I [14:38] bring to the table now and these students are working with social enterprises they're solving [14:43] real world problems alongside that they're reflecting on this question while also fine [14:48] tuning an AI model to understand how the technical side of things works and to me that's what a [14:54] university education is about it's about having critical conversations learning the latest [14:58] research on this but also building your own opinion and your own perspective and your own [15:03] path that also suits your uh your ideals towards what the future should be this is your world I [15:09] think Priya as well at Century Tech you you're training people for jobs that might not yet have [15:15] been defined or even technology that's not there so for parents and for for young people who might [15:22] be watching how how should they think about their education and what they do yeah I think look AI is [15:28] definitely showing a spotlight on education and the flaws in education and the fact that [15:33] we can talk about school education college education how we actually treasure what we [15:38] measure in education so it's the assessment process that actually I think is the is the [15:42] problem right people want to train children and have them study and learn curricula that's very [15:48] much built towards an end sort of high-stakes assessment now it used to be we take that for [15:52] granted we go to university or we go to college to further Education College school and it's a [15:57] currency right that certificate you end up with with those grades that's a currency actually [16:03] you know does it what you need to do is think about education and what it's for right we need [16:08] to give foundational knowledge I really am a big believer in that and I just don't think we can [16:12] just Google everything or search for everything because we won't be able to develop those crucial [16:18] skills and build judgment so foundation also that's the color of life yeah I mean we exist [16:22] so we need that foundational knowledge is number one number two then applied right how does this [16:28] actually work in the real world how do I solve problems and the third that I've sort of I like [16:33] learning agility this ability to learn how to learn so that we don't end up with Generations [16:39] you know cohorts of students leaving formal education and thinking hang on that's not what [16:45] you said it would be it's not a conveyor belt to a job now what do I do but what about what about [16:50] Bernard that those those you'll hear a lot of people say oh well uh my my child is studying [16:56] as an accountant and uh they're being trained on spreadsheets and profit and loss accounts but all [17:02] of that can now be done by AI [17:03] but that is the stepping stone to the next level within the company what if we remove the jobs the [17:09] lower level jobs that elevators higher up in the company and that's a challenge I mean I have three [17:16] children they're all just getting ready for University or in University this is something [17:20] I think about every single day I I completely agree with what you just said I wrote a book [17:25] called future skills in which I look at the 20 skills we will need for the future three of them [17:31] are technically related so we need to understand AI and what it's going to look like and that's the [17:34] only thing we can do beyond this is what makes us truly human is our empathy is our critical [17:39] thinking is our strategic problem solving and is our ability to learn and continuously relearn [17:47] these things are absolutely vital so what we need is companies need to understand that they [17:53] need employees in the future so they need to create tracks into these organizations that [17:59] allow young people to come in at the moment I almost feel that there's a wrong emphasis the [18:04] emphasis on driving efficiency and cutting costs and that's easy I can look at my existing processes [18:12] and what I do and think okay AI can almost do the jobs of most Junior roles so I simply cut those [18:18] roles so if I cut those roles I also cut off my future employees and also the ability to completely [18:25] rethink how you work as an organization and this is something that I see very little happening in [18:32] the real world I see this in a few AI native companies [18:35] but most companies don't get that and there's a really good example of this Ella in a very [18:40] successful company called Klarna people will be familiar with it the CEO there replaced around [18:45] 700 jobs with a chatbot powered by open AI massive cost-cutting exercise and then that was sometime [18:53] last year and then by December the company announced a huge recruitment drive because the [18:58] work delivered by AI was of a lower quality but more importantly customers wanted a human in the [19:04] loop they wanted [19:05] that empathy and that foundational knowledge that Priya talked about that makes so much sense and [19:11] these sorts of moves are motivated by all sorts of different incentives in the end but we do need [19:16] to understand that the AI hype can often lead to decisions that are regretted and that's why [19:22] it's so important to have a good technical understanding what can this stuff actually [19:25] do and as Bernard's saying really think about the future we're hearing a lot of talk at the [19:30] moment about Diamond shaped organizations so you've got a few people at the top a kind of [19:35] model of experienced workers and then we don't need many entry-level positions but what does that [19:41] mean in terms of a funnel this uh this doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you're thinking [19:45] about how you're going to train Newcomers so well then Ella what if you're a CEO watching this and [19:51] you're you're toying with this idea of cutting your lower level what would be your advice to [19:56] them I think it depends on the strategy are you looking for a long-term proposition or is this [20:01] something that's only oriented towards the short term so those temporal Horizons make [20:05] a difference and if you're really looking to grow a culture and a company that's going to [20:10] remain distinctive then you do need to pay attention to those entry-level jobs not just [20:14] that though how are entry-level people actually going to meaningfully interact with your more [20:19] senior level management when no one wants to bother each other because we've all been told [20:23] we need to be busy and efficient for a long time then people are not going to reach out with their [20:27] silly questions but that's how you actually build relationships find mentors figure out how things [20:32] work which brings us to an audience question I love our audience [20:36] so this one is from Syed Almeri in Dubai um who runs operations across two organizations and I'm [20:45] paraphrasing his email Ella because it's it's quite a long one but essentially he says AI [20:50] hasn't just made our team faster it's allowed a small team to produce the kind of work that [20:56] they used to require external agencies and consultants to do so they're bringing stuff [21:00] in-house that they would have had to delegate and he calls that operating leverage [21:06] so there is a man who has fundamentally Bernard reimagined how his organization works and how [21:11] AI is structured within it are the CEOs you speak to day to day doing that no I think some of them [21:21] do and those will be the successful CEOs of the future um and I I think we need to fundamentally [21:29] rethink how we do work and how humans fit into that and what an individual can do I even see [21:36] this in my own job in my own work I think that's a really important thing to do I think that's a really [21:37] important work so I I used to spend the first hour of my day reading my emails I get pictures [21:43] every day from tech companies telling me about all the latest developments and all the case studies [21:48] and I get newsletters and I try to sift through this to understand what I need to focus on now I [21:55] have an AI to do this for me the AI will read it the AI already knows what I know and then turns [22:01] this into a podcast for me so when I go get up in the morning I walk my dog listen to the podcast [22:08] and I can come back to my office with with a good idea of what I want to do more research on so I [22:14] then set another AI agent off to do this research for me while I can think strategically when I can [22:21] think about how to develop relationships with some of the CEOs I'm working with [22:27] that is really empowering and in the past I would have had to employ a number of people [22:33] to do this for me yeah but in that in that example that that Saeed has just given his Ella [22:39] and his AI as as as commendable as it is is replacing the jobs that consultants and agencies [22:47] would have done so at some position in the food chain we have to be pretty blunt about this there [22:53] are jobs going one thing in the in the interim is also to look at this and go does this have a [22:59] long-term value proposition so kind of like the planet example and here I mean using AI can kind [23:07] of cause us to overestimate what we're able to achieve sometimes to our own expertise [23:11] something might look like it's good quality code or a good quality image or a good quality website [23:18] will that actually hold up to to the world then had you mentioned uh AI as a genie and you know [23:26] genies are tricksters we call it a spirited technology it comes at you with all sorts of [23:31] little quirks and random you know the the extra fingers these things can get solved but it takes [23:36] a trained eye to actually detect the the spirited quirks of AI and we need to maintain [23:42] experts at every level of this process so I'm happy if people are making it work for themselves [23:47] but it shouldn't be seen as something that can be easily replicated okay well since we're talking [23:52] about efficiency and we're near the end of the program um I thought I would show you this just [23:56] to lighten the mood a little which I spotted on X this week it does appear to me to be the [24:01] most important development so far or the development with the furthest reaching [24:05] consequences this is from a trade show in Switzerland it's a robot that autonomously [24:11] pours cooks [24:12] and folds the perfect crepe it does it's Swiss it's not French in fact I'm surprised the French [24:21] have not yet called an emergency Summit on this whether it is actually AI yeah or whether it's [24:26] just clever automation I'm not so sure but it has made me wonder Priya uh you're talking to [24:32] the person who lives next to has befriended and like serves coffee every day to the people who [24:39] run the famous crap stand in London I draw a line I'm officially drawing a line yeah [24:43] on crap is there nothing sacrosanct no there is I want my crepes made by Veronica at the Hampstead [24:50] crepe sand I don't want burns I don't want Bernard improving bot it's been proving robot flipping my [24:57] crepes I'd love to see a robot peeling off the ceiling yeah yeah best of luck with that that's [25:03] where the human comes in let me do that for you gets her way it will be able to spot the crepe [25:08] and it will go and scrub it off for you spatial intelligence okay well next week on [25:13] AI Decoded we're going to explore actually one area of work that is changing how artificial [25:18] intelligence is transforming the world of advertising from big shared campaigns to [25:23] messages tailored specifically for you you might have some thoughts on that so if you do want to [25:29] take part please email us at aidecoded bbc.co.uk and maybe we can incorporate some of those thoughts [25:36] in the program thank you very much to Bernard thank you Ella thank you Priya for your thoughts [25:43] that you have time for just a reminder that you can watch this episode and all our back catalog on [25:48] the AI Decoded YouTube playlist have a look at that and also on the BBC iPlayer thanks [25:54] very much for watching we'll see you next week