The recent reports regarding Mediclinic’s transition to a more aggressive artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, which would likely result in hiring freezes and job cuts, has ignited another wave of anxiety in humanity’s ever constant apprehension towards the accelerating development of AI.
While Mediclinic’s strategy excludes cuts in nurses and doctors and is merely geared to enhance capacity in administrative functions during peak seasons, this kind of news fuels the fear of how, not if, AI will further replace humans and their purpose.
After all, any threat to one’s livelihood will always be met with opposition and hostility. A human’s inherent instinct is to survive. Throughout mankind’s development, we have linked that innate desire for survival to a job with an income to afford our needs and wants, and scale ourselves up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
However, the chances of AI’s demise are even slimmer than a snowball’s chance of surviving in hell.
The benefits for business in adopting AI strategies and systems grow each day. There are already several case studies that suggest AI integration in business operations reduces people or overhead costs by 60% to 70%.
The world is increasingly headed into an intelligence age. No one has the capability to stop it.
Businesses simply cannot disregard the fluid trends in technology development. Throughout our history, businesses have had to adapt to changes in industry. If any company wished to defy the growing usage of the telephone in the 1900s in favour of retaining the telegram system from the previous century, they would have very soon found themselves in trouble with the bank.
Ignoring the trends comes attached with tangible consequences. For a more post-modern example, BlackBerry’s refusal to recognise the release of the iPhone in 2007 as a threat − and its belief that consumers would remain attached to buttoned phones, while passing off the opportunity for a touch-screen − has resulted in Apple remaining a Silicon Valley Goliath, while BlackBerry’s discontinued products remain dust-covered artifacts in the homes of suburban hoarders.
But all of this does not discount the ethical dilemmas we face with AI’s development. Does it mean the replacement of man and the obliteration of livelihoods?
Like any other industry that relies on technology, South Africa’s healthcare sector cannot sit back and not invest in AI and innovation. The world is increasingly headed into an intelligence age. No one has the capability to stop it. Even if a dictator of a super power nation would try to halt its development in their own country, another superpower would emerge who built on, and developed AI. In other words, if you do not take advantage of the circumstances around you, someone else will.
Nonetheless, AI does not mean the replacement of mankind and the end of livelihoods. What it does indicate is that older industries and jobs die out, while newer industries and positions are created. This is not a new phenomenon. It has repeated for centuries and will continue doing so.
For example, AI systems, such as chatbots and virtual agents, are slowly replacing the functions of customer care operations such as call centres, e-mail support staff and live chat reps, especially when it comes to basic tasks such as checking account balances or resetting passwords. AI systems can understand natural language processing and handle high volumes with instant responses 24 hours a day.
Does this mean the end of the line for the humans who had managed these functions? Not necessarily. Our global economy relies on innovation and constant development. But simultaneously, that economy is still underpinned by high employment. People need to earn money to spend it in the circular economy.
Just as it is our responsibility as mankind to embrace technological change, it remains our responsibility that new economic opportunities for the ordinary person arise from those changes.
If we make the job of call centre agents, e-mail support staff and live chat reps redundant, then we need to upskill them to write the chatbot scripts; flag incorrect responses; fine-tune chatbot conversation to understand slang, emotion and tone; and use AI data to constantly optimise the user experience, escalate complex cases and update chatbot knowledge bases and so forth.
AI is not designed to replace us. It is designed to improve and enhance our lives.
In the healthcare industry, tools have already been developed to assist therapists in how they engage with autistic children. These platforms equip practitioners with adaptive tools to address the unique needs of each individual child, by bridging the gaps in understanding and communication. In this case, therapists are not replaced, but their work enriched for far better results.
More and more companies, like Mediclinic, are making the tough decision to embrace AI, but often at the expense of job cuts. How do they arrive at such a decision?
As industry leaders in AI and innovation, we need to guide corporations on their AI journey to ensure they scale up their operations, make cost-effective decisions, and upskill employees so they can integrate into their new AI-powered environments.
AI is about sustainability. If it is not delivering economic sustainability, then how will it shape and improve our future? This requires vision and ethical leadership at the heart of innovation industries.
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