Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a prominent topic of conversation over recent years, managing to have impacts within the workplace and beyond.
Though AI has proven helpful in many ways, with ChatGPT becoming a useful tool that can help supplement the work of a human being, fears have slowly begun to arise regarding the possibility of ChatGPT and other AI to replace human employees entirely.
In an interview with Careers Portal, Duncan Park, the Associate Director of Assessment at The Management College of Southern Africa (MANCOSA), speaks more about this issue.
He notes that automation is certainly a valid fear for employees in many industries, and although he believes that the human aspect is still of value in the workplace, he adds,
I think that realistically, you know, jobs are going to change.
Considering the rapid advancement in the capabilities of AI and its potential in the workplace, Park says that we “are going to be forced to change” and that we in the workplace will need to find a way to “embrace this change.”
Nevertheless, as a member of the higher education sector, he believes that as much as AI has to offer the job sector, human beings shall not become obsolete so long as their jobs are able to transform alongside AI advancements.
Park says,
there will always be a need for human intervention, you know, generative AI is only as powerful as the user's ability to prompt it. Without someone to prompt, it doesn't have a task to do. So, there will always be a need for that kind of human component, but the role of that human component is going to rapidly change.
He further adds that “we have to accept that this change is real. And we have to embrace these sorts of technologies and shifts to make sure that we remain relevant and up to date to what's happening around.”
Speaking specifically about writing, Park notes that even as advanced as AI has become, its abilities are limited to drawing from already existing content. Therefore, when it comes to writing from a fresh perspective, a bot would not be able to do so, at least as it currently stands.
AI would not be able to create completely original content, which is where the human aspect remains quite essential. AI also does not have the benefit of context or human subjectivity and human experience, which is another reason why the human aspect in the workplace, especially in the education and writing sectors, remains essential.
Park also notes that while many working professionals that he has spoken to in the journalism space feel strongly against making use of AI within their ‘passion,’ he does believe there to be value in the use of AI for day-to-day tasks.
I think it's a matter of just embracing and finding how you can use these tools in your day-to-day activities. I feel like you'd be a fool not to.
From a more general standpoint, the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2023 mentions that “Organizations today estimate that 34% of all business-related tasks are performed by machines, with the remaining 66% performed by humans.” This is subject to change over the years as technologies such as AI, grow more advanced.
Nevertheless, this statistic is said to contradict 2020 surveys which revealed expectations that by 2023, almost half of business operations would be automated.
This potentially offers further indication that thus far, AI has seemed to function more as having “augmented human performance rather than automating tasks.”
As such, this may represent a possible positive for the fate of human employment, as AI has not proven to entirely replace the workforce as yet. However, with the rapid advancements in technology already being made, there is no concrete way of telling what the future of employment may hold.
