As Meta announced the loss of another 8,000 jobs at the end of last week, citing its investment in AI, the suggestion by the chair of the UK’s Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW) that the technology sometimes seems like an easy scapegoat felt prescient.
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon was in Dublin for the recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) conference in the RDS when she told The Irish Times many employers need to engage with their workers a little more intelligently when seeking to maximise their return from AI.
“If you want to get the most out of it, it does need to be worker-led, worker-informed, worker-centred in the way that you’re deploying AI.
“They know the role and will know what the machines can help with or do better,” she says.
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How many would suggest AI could simply replace them is open to question, of course, and it’s hard to imagine the 8,000 staff at Meta had much of a role in the company’s decision to do away with their jobs.
Imafidon, whose own background is in computer science and social entrepreneurship but also includes a stint in television, readily acknowledges the technology is having a growing impact on workplaces but, she insists, “there is this phenomenon, it seems, with companies investing heavily in AI and then needing to justify it by seeing an immediate return. And those immediate returns are a really big issue.
“People are usually the most expensive resource a company has and it’s a bit of a cop-out but, for some, money-saving equals getting rid of people.”
In others, she contends, “AI is probably an easy scapegoat, almost a victimless crime. The employer says ‘AI can do it,’ and everyone’s going to go: ‘Yeah, boo, AI.’ Right?”
One issue, she believes, is that AI is not quite where some of those selling its services are claiming it is and “in the really bad examples we have seen, managements have sent thousands of people home because they believed AI could do the work and then months later they’ve said: ‘Actually, can you come back? Because it can’t do what we thought.’”
[ AI boom threatens to cause ‘significant upheaval’ for Irish tech jobsOpens in new window ]
Research published by the IFOW, an independent think tank that works with various stakeholders including the CIPD, unions and government agencies, has recognised the productivity benefits the technology can offer but it also suggested the benefits can be greatest where managements work with their staff to develop new ways of working and invest in their ability to implement it.
Case studies published in collaboration with the CIPD at the start of this month appeared to support that premise across a wide range of employer types.
In this more collaborative scenario, workers are most likely to share in the benefits too, an outcome somewhat at odds with the recent ESRI report that predicted negative future impacts on employee income, with higher earners more heavily impacted.
“So, it’s about optimising what you are doing as a company,” says Imafidon. “And the companies that do better are the ones that say ‘we are going to open up this AI platform but we’re going to work with you [the staff] on how work transforms’.”
In addition to greater productivity and increased profits, she suggests, there can also be benefits for staff, whether that is in the form of pay, changed work practices or time.
“In the end, it’s about better decisions being made,” she says.
That level of collaboration might be regarded as something of an ideal, however, and she accepts that for many enterprises with concerns around competition, the more immediate concern will be the bottom line.
Either way, she believes, there will be a need for greater regulation around the impact AI has on the employment landscape in order to ensure the level of change experienced and the way it is implemented is “responsible”.
“The role regulations and regulatory bodies play in supporting this transition is a really big one, and it’s one of the pillars of the work that we’re doing at the institute. If that’s not upheld, then these things are not going to work.”
More fundamentally, she laments some of the ways in which the new technology is being deployed. At the CIPD Ireland event in the RDS at which she spoke, a contributor from the floor spoke about the automation of some food dispensing at Dublin Airport and Imafidon cited it as an example of where taking the human factor out of a process might be regarded as a clear negative.
“The folks at Dublin Airport might want to think about other things. I think there’s the opportunity for non-technologists to say: ‘Do you know what? This is a real problem, not how I get my food. The problem is my health. How do we get robots to support wellbeing?
“’The problem is a lack of joy,” she continues, warming to the theme. “Let’s look into that. How do we get the robots to help promote joy and support joy for folks? That’s a huge market so it’s not that you wouldn’t make any money.”
The folks in Silicon Valley, to be fair, have likely thought about just about every aspect of the technology’s use there might be a return in but Imafidon is adamant they, and society in general, can do better and, she says, she remains optimistic that we will, “because it isn’t just about technology, it’s about people”.
“I think my optimism comes from a little bit of that gap between a lot of what’s being said by folks versus the quality of the data sets that we have when we look at the shape of the workforce, what work looks like.
“Things can only be automated if they’re majority digitised and some of the technologists believe everything can be automated because everything in their world is digitised. But the invention of the AI tutor doesn’t mean everybody wants to stop going to school. Healthcare might benefit hugely from AI but it can’t all be automated.”
The challenge, she suggests, is find the correct balance while remembering that the technology is supposed to be for the benefit of humans.
If only there was someone, or something, we could ask to show us the way.
