More and more US firms are on the verge of flipping the switch in terms of automating tasks with artificial intelligence.
According to Survey amongst CFOs from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, plans for using AI in the approaching yr are increasing rapidly.
Companies have been automating work for generations. The survey found that 60% of firms plan to make use of software, devices and/or other technology to automate worker tasks in the following 12 months. That’s little change from the 59% who said their firms had automated tasks up to now 12 months.
But when asked specifically concerning the use of AI, the responses indicated a critical turning point. Among firms expecting to automate in the following 12 months, about 54 percent said they are going to use AI tools to automate tasks done by employees, while 27 percent didn’t.
Compare this to the 37% who used AI for automation within the last 12 months and the 60% who didn’t, and it is nearly the other.
“CFOs say their companies are using AI to automate a variety of tasks, from paying suppliers to invoicing, procurement, financial reporting and optimizing asset utilization,” said John Graham, a finance professor at Duke University and academic lead on the survey, in a press release. “In addition, companies are using ChatGPT to generate creative ideas and write job descriptions, contracts, marketing plans and press releases.”
Large firms are leading the way in which in adopting AI. 76 percent of respondents said they are going to use AI for automation in the approaching yr, up from 55 percent who used AI last yr.
Yet small businesses have also jumped on the bandwagon: 44% say they are going to use AI to automate tasks in the following 12 months, 32% don’t, and 29% did so within the previous 12 months.
Given that employees multitask of their jobs, the survey doesn’t necessarily suggest that firms will completely replace human employees with AI.
However, it does suggest that AI skills have gotten increasingly essential within the workplace, maybe even faster than people think.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman told CNN: that in three to 5 years, humanity will probably have an “agent co-pilot” to help it in its tasks.
“It’s a transformation of jobs. Human jobs are being replaced – but by other humans using AI,” he added. “The whole idea is to be the human using AI, to learn it, to use it and to implement it.”
In the long run, nonetheless, the impact of AI on the labor market may very well be more significant.
Earlier this yr, enterprise capitalist Kai-Fu Lee reiterated his 2017 prediction that AI would replace 50% of human jobs in the following decade.
At the Fortune Innovation Forum in Hong Kong in March Assets Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell asked him if the schedule was still valid.
He replied: “That’s actually incredibly accurate. People criticized me for being too aggressive in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and I was a little nervous at the time. But when the second generation AI came out, I think everyone jumped on the bandwagon and believes that this is the right pace.”
