How Microsoft’s CEO Believes AI Will Transform the Workplace
By Movieguide® Contributor
As artificial intelligence’s role in everyday life continues to grow, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explained how he believes the technology will be integrated into work to transform the world.
While some worry that AI will replace many jobs, Nadella believes it will transform many jobs in the same way technology innovations in the past have done so. While this may, in fact, eliminate the need for some jobs, overall it will make the workplace even more productive, while also giving way to the creation of new jobs.
Nadella explained his understanding of the future of AI by comparing it to the introduction of email and powerful spreadsheet processors into the workforce which overhauled how companies worked with its data.
“Faxes went around,” Nadella told YouTuber Dwarkesh Patel when explaining a previous tech innovation, per Business Insider. “Somebody then got those faxes and then did an interoffice memo that then went around, and people entered numbers, and, you know, then ultimately a forecast came, maybe just in time for the next quarter.”
He then explained how email streamlined the transfer of data, while Excel allowed for much quicker and more powerful number crunching.
“So, the entire forecasting business process changed because the work artifact and the workflow changed,” Nadella explained. “That is what needs to happen with AI being introduced into knowledge work.”
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A recent study from McKinsey Digital explored the “transformative potential of AI” in the workplace, saying the technology “does not just automate tasks but goes further by automating cognitive functions.”
“Unlike any invention before, AI-powered software can adapt, plan, guide — and even make — decisions. That’s why AI can be a catalyst for unprecedented economic growth and societal change in virtually every aspect of life. It will reshape our interaction with technology and with one another,” the report said.
However, Nadella believes that, like tech innovations of the past, the introduction of AI will only streamline tedious work rather than replace the aspects of a job that people actually enjoy.
“The knowledge work of today could probably be automated. Who said my life’s goal is to triage email, right? Let an AI agent triage my email,” he said. “But after having triaged my email, give me a fighter-level cognitive labor tasks of, ‘Hey, these are the three drafts I really want you to review.’”
In fact, that’s how Gen Z uses AI in the workplace. Business Insider reported that 93% of Gen Zers use two or more AI tools per week to streamline time-consuming work.
“So basically, think of it as: There is knowledge work, and there’s a knowledge worker, right,” Nadella added. “The knowledge work may be done by many, many agents, but you still have a knowledge worker who is dealing with all the knowledge workers. And that, I think, is the interface that one has to build.”
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