AI, Metaverse, Chatbots: To Get Ahead, Here Are Workplace Trends to Watch for in 2024
29.12.2023 - 01:23
/ tech.hindustantimes.com
/ Ai
AI, Metaverse, Chatbots: Every end-of-year working assumption is the same: Next year will be different. This is the eternal optimism of business and the never-ending story of innovation. But this time it's true, certainly when it comes to workplace technology. All sorts of incredible things will be possible at your desk (wherever your desk is), but it will come with a price: possibly the steepest learning curve in knowledge work since the word processor way back in the analog age of the 1970s. ChatGPT's arrival a year ago has captured the collective imagination with 100 million users per week, according to its creator, OpenAI. Workers got a taste of what it's like to ask AI tools to write their emails and summarize documents for them, but in the year ahead these tools will only get more sophisticated and be able to respond to images, voice commands, and potentially carry out more complex tasks with limited human intervention. That has the potential to radically change the day-to-day experience of work.
But, as Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta, which has invested in artificial intelligence since 2014, told a recent conference, “it's pretty confusing.” That said, he's adamant that AI tools are a career necessity, telling me on my podcast that “Just like when computers were first introduced, skills went on a resume. Saying today you are proficient in AI is a skill.”
Humans do learn how to use technology, and amazingly fast when you think about it. But AI brings a new turn on the tech wheel, and we have to learn it, too. Why? Because the impact of AI on how we work and the jobs we do is as revolutionary as the internet. According to research from McKinsey Global Institute, the earnings boost for some banks is as high as $340 billion, or a 9% to 15% increase in operating profits.
As Peter Miscovich, global future of work leader at real estate firm JLL put it: “Generative AI has risen to become an equal and increasing priority for global organizations in comparison to the enterprise priorities of hybrid working and providing flexible work environments.” But the corporate sector is on the same steep learning curve as you and me. JLL found in a recent survey that while generative AI comes in third in a ranking of impact on their industry (clean energy solutions is number one), it ranks lowest for “level of knowledge.”
The real estate sector isn't alone in recognizing the knowledge gap. Wipro, an Indian IT company, has committed $1 billion to training its 250,000 workers, both to help them understand generative AI but also to integrate it into its product offerings. Wipro's own webpage on AI shows a bewildering technical array of terms. Just as new acronyms define the flexible working era take your pick from