Alongside the crush of data, information, and always-on communications the pace of work has increased exponentially. Employees are struggling to shoulder the weight of it all. Meanwhile, business leaders feel pressure to increase productivity amid economic uncertainty. People spend more and more of their days separating the signal from the noise, and it’s coming at the cost of creativity. Microsoft believes that AI may be the solution.
In a new report from Microsoft, the CEO Satya Nadella says that the new generation of AI will remove the drudgery of work and unleash creativity. Microsoft surveyed 31,000 people in 31 countries and analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, along with labor trends from the LinkedIn economic graph. The data points to three urgent insights that business leaders must know as they look to quickly and responsibly adopt AI. First, digital debt is costing us innovation. Second, there’s a new AI employee alliance. Finally, every employee in the future will need AI aptitude.
However, using artificial intelligence is not without controversy. A group of tech leaders sent a letter to regulators, asking that development be paused for six months. They hoped to use the time to study the unintended consequences that could come with the use of AI.
The immediate worry is about job losses. For example, IBM recently said it wouldn’t hire people for 8,000 jobs that could be done with artificial intelligence. In the long term, there are worries about what a powerful computer system could teach itself. Some are even concerned about these computers taking over systems in the future.