How AI and Industry Automation Are Transforming Small-Medium Businesses – Part 2

This client briefing is part 2 of our series on how AI and industry automation are transforming the way businesses operate.

My intention for this series is to make sure AI is part of your awareness and your strategic thinking. In part 1 I discussed the short-term implications of AI and how we can use the AI tools that are currently available. The key areas I explored were keeping up with the advances in tools like ChatGPT, autonomous machines and job roles that have been replaced or changed already.

You can revisit the briefing here: Tenfold Client Briefing – Artificial Intelligence and the Automation of Industries – Part 1

Part Two: Impact of AI on Small-Medium Business in the next 3 to 5 years

In this briefing, I want to look a bit further ahead and see what might be coming that will impact your small business over the next 3 to 5 years. These are the key areas I’ll explore:

1. Job Roles that Will be Replaced by AI
2. Job Roles that will be Augmented by AI
3. Augmentation of High Skill, Manual Labour Job Roles
4. Augmentation of High Skill, Professional Job Roles
5. What the Impact of AI Transformation Means for Your Business

Before we get into that, let’s review how artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT work.

OpenAI (parent company of ChatGPT) used approximately 570Gb out of the 5 billion Gb of data from the internet to teach their AI algorithm how to respond to prompts. Because the internet is mostly made up of written text, data and images, this means it is easier to train an AI to write, analyse data and design images.

But there are a lot more uses for AI than just responding to an email or creating an image for your website.

So, what impact will AI have on my business?

Nobody really knows where developments in AI are heading. There are lots of smart people investing in AI companies and writing about the impact of AI, but like all new technology, future uses can be hard to predict.

The key is to stay informed and watch the broad trends as they start developing. By being aware you can see opportunities open up and identify threats as they develop.

Based on the research I’ve done to date, here are some observations to factor into your thinking for your business.

AI will broadly impact roles and the businesses connected with those roles in one of three different ways;

1. It will replace some roles,
2. It will augment some roles,
3. And it will create altogether new roles.

Let’s look at each type of role that AI will impact in turn.

1. Job Roles that will be Replaced by AI

Some low skill, manual labour job roles will be replaced in the next 5 years. Take for example a basic office cleaning role. We already have robotic vacuums, over the next 5 years other specialist robots will be introduced that will take over most of the other cleaning duties.

Mistakes in these low skill, manual labour roles are annoying rather than catastrophic. This means less testing and faster adoption. If an office cleaning robot makes a mistake the consequences are a lot less than when an autonomous vehicle makes a mistake. Now, it’s a lot more difficult to train AI robots to clean an office than it is to write an email. There are complexities in how a human cleaner navigates an office, finding and identifying dust and spillages and then cleaning them without disrupting paper and equipment on desks.

However just like ChatGPT was trained on vast quantities of internet text, data and images, the AI robots we’ll see over the next 5 years will be trained using video and sensors. Imagine if the person that cleans your office was recorded via video and sensors millions of times, moving around your desks, emptying bins and assessing the cleanliness of your surfaces.

All of this data could be used to train various types of cleaning robots to perform the same task. It won’t be just one robot, it will be multiple intelligent devices that will complete unique cleaning tasks and it will be the simpler tasks that will be automated first.

All of this will mean that there will be less need for cleaners apart from in environments where cleanliness is critical.

Now consider all of the other low skill, manual labour job roles that are similar in nature to cleaning:

• Food preparation – peeling, slicing and basic preparation
• Warehousing stocking and picking – unpacking, picking and despatching of boxes and pallet loads
• Gardening – mowing, raking and basic trimming
• Factory work – selection, quality control and assembly
• Farming and nursery work – planting, watering and harvesting

However, some low skill, manual labour job roles will remain for longer, due to two factors:

• Job roles where human safety is at risk (i.e. school crossing supervision)
• Job roles where there is a high degree of union representation or laws legislating the tasks (i.e. traffic management)

2. Job Roles that will be Augmented by AI

There are two categories of job roles that won’t be replaced in the medium term or at all, but instead these roles will be augmented.

High skill, manual labour job roles

• Construction work
• Tradespeople
• Repair technicians
• Nursing
• Physiotherapy and other allied health roles

High skill, professional job roles

• Most qualified roles that involve office work

To understand augmentation, think about when you’ve driven a car with the lane assist feature. You’ve still got your hands on the steering wheel, but the car assists by steering you back into the centre of the lane if you start to drift.

These high skill job roles require substantial tacit knowledge and skills. Tacit skills are not something you can easily explain to someone else, such as driving a car.

3. Augmentation of High Skill, Manual Labour Job Roles

Let’s take high skill, manual labour work, a task such as an electrician diagnosing a fault in a switchboard. After opening the switchboard, there are all sorts of micro and instinctive decisions that are made to determine; what might be the likely switchboard issue, what measurements to take with a multimeter to confirm this, what other issues it could be if it isn’t the likely issue, then how to fix it in the short term and finally how to repair it so that it doesn’t occur again.

As per the cleaning example above, companies will find ways to collect huge amounts of data relating to highly skilled people going about their work. This will be in the form of video, sensor and written procedural data. By working with huge amounts of data and building upon the current learnings from training AI, we’ll see tools that will augment these job roles.

To explain how this will work, consider a DIY task you might need to complete at home. If you need to replace a part on your vacuum cleaner, your best course of action is to go to YouTube and type the part and vacuum cleaner model number. There you’ll find a 5 minute video on how to do the task. This is a basic example of augmentation.

Now think of the Apple Vision Pro VR headset that was released last year:

Imagine the electrician wearing this as they open the switchboard. A specialised AI enabled program inside the headset will take visual readings of the switchboard:

The headset will then direct the electrician as to exactly where they should place their voltmeter. The VR headset will then suggest three possible issues with the switchboard and rate the probability of it being each one. It will provide the most efficient method to diagnose the issue and in the VR headset show how to fix the issue overlaying the instructions on the actual switchboard components.

This is an example of job role augmentation where the AI system works with the technician to complete the work faster and to a higher level of quality.

4. Augmentation of High Skill, Professional Job Roles

Training AI to augment professional job roles is easier in one way, as the data sets required for the training are already digitised. For example, in the legal field there are databases you can access with the full text of all law reports and unreported judgments from all of the major Australian courts. These are being used to train AI engines.

Training AI to augment professional job roles is harder in another way as professionals generally make more complex decisions, require a very high degree of judgement and creative thinking. Oftentimes the best solutions might not have ever been previously considered. Considering AI engines are trained on previous data, this makes it more difficult for them to come up with unique and highly creative new ideas.

To demonstrate why augmentation is the likely option for both high skill manual labour and high skill professional roles, let’s look at a progressive organisation in this area. Goldman Sachs is considered one of the most successful investment banks in the world. In a recent interview, their head of technology explained that they currently employ 12,000 software developers around the world.

As a result of introducing some early generative AI tools into their software development team, Goldman Sachs have seen an average 20% increase in efficiency per programmer. In their US programming team, the average entry level programmer is earning the equivalent of AU$300,000. The magnitude of savings that they’re seeing from early-stage AI tools is phenomenal. Importantly, even with these savings they’re increasing the number of developers they employ. They’re able to commence so many more new projects now, as a result of the AI tool and the efficiency gains.

5. What AI Role Transformation Means for Your Business

Over the coming years, be proactive with understanding and assessing AI and autonomous technologies that can augment the job roles in your business and those of your customers. As we’ve seen with everyone’s use of ChatGPT, it takes time to learn how to best use the technology – be a curious adopter.

As small business coaches we’re researching and discussing how this technology may impact different client industries and how we might need to adjust your strategy to ensure you don’t get left behind.

In the next and final instalment of this series, I’ll look some of the long-term predictions for where AI and automation technology could possibly lead, including the new job roles that are likely to be created.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or thoughts speak to your Tenfold business coach or contact our team.

Cheers,
Ash