From our daily online to offline experiences, the impact of Artificial intelligence (AI) on our everyday lives is no longer a secret. Apart from that, today AI is fast transforming our world with promises for a better future. And this is despite the fact that the true potential of AI technology is yet to be unlocked.
AI isn’t just a good fit for finance as the nascent technology has proved its worth in almost every sector and industry including healthcare, security, energy, agriculture and space science to name a few. Its application ranges from medical diagnostics and autonomous vehicles, to AI-powered weapon systems and more.
While we are today seeing numerous actual benefits of artificial intelligence, it is perhaps AI’s unseen potential that has prompted countries, companies and firms to accelerate its adoption in order to gain and strengthen technological competitiveness and superiority.
Fear of the known
The age of algorithms is here. AI and machine learning (ML) technologies continue to become a larger part of our everyday life even if we don’t notice it. From government departments, agencies to companies and firms everyone seems to have jumped into the race to capture AI’s opportunities in order to harness its potential for advantage.
But this AI adoption journey is not easy because of the inherited challenges as well as human-created barriers. Of these challenges and barriers, fear is one big impediment. The fear is: human workers will become obsolete because of AI/ML-powered machines. The good thing is this ‘fear of the known’ is easy to fight and win. For this, experts suggest investing in AI education in order to empower workers to adapt to using artificial intelligence. The idea is to prepare them for the rapidly changing world of work.
Towards an AI enabled future
There is increasing focus on the role of AI as augmentation and to develop an AI-oriented culture within the organizations. For example, the Department of Defense (DoD) emphasizes the role of AI as augmentation rather than as the replacement of humans. The department is all for human-centered adoption of AI. As per the DoD’s AI Strategy document the strategic approach or focus areas that guide DoD in its efforts to accelerate AI adoption include cultivation of a leading AI workforce.
“When AI is adopted broadly, employees up and down the hierarchy will augment their own judgment and intuition with algorithms’ recommendations to arrive at better answers than either humans or machines could reach on their own,” write the authors in their article “Building the AI-Powered Organization” in Harvard Business Review. They also suggest that AI has the biggest impact when it’s developed by cross-functional teams with a mix of skills and perspectives.