Good News on the AI Front

Or at least from the perspective of one writer and in the midst of darkening horizons, it is nice to see a spark of light.

You see, this writer asked, “Why do I still have a job?” Okay, that is from a New York Times article written by Farhad Manjoo on 10/7/2022 called “In the Battle With Robots, Human Workers Are Winning”.

If you subscribe to the newsletter, here’s the link.

For the past decade, there has been a lot of articles and books warning about the coming devouring AI hoovering up all of our jobs and warning that we need to become more human, whatever that means. Yet, we are still working today, with news in the past two years or so decrying the labor shortage.

What’s going on? Not really sure but the author makes an attempt. If I understand him correctly, it boils down to humans are really more capable than previously acknowledged and we have managed to use the AI as tools to complement what we can do.

The second one (using AI as a tool to complement us) is quite likely a big factor: a lot of us are learning how to take advantage of the tools and parlay them in ways that makes our work desirable to the management. There is a telling phrase in the article:

---

“Langlotz concluded that “Will A.I. replace radiologists?” is “the wrong question.” Instead, he wrote, “The right answer is: Radiologists who use A.I. will replace radiologists who don’t.””

— Langlotz, New York Times, “In the Battle With Robots, Human Workers Are Winning”, 10/7/2022, by Farhad Manjoo

---

But the key is that we adopt a digital mindset and learn how to use those tools to our advantage. Unfortunately, there will still be a lot of automation and transition where some people will not be able to adjust to the new reality. What about those who can’t figure out how to use those tools? Will they be left behind? I don’t know. It depends on how they can parlay their non-technical skills to their advantage.

I believe right now the financial automation in FP&A are going slowly because businesses still have to run so they can’t just drop their legacy systems and the transition may be cost prohibitive for some companies, especially the smaller ones that have been around for a while. There is also the conundrum of skills required to run these new automated systems. There may be fewer humans but we still need them. Finding those people who can be trained and run those systems may be a challenge.

The time is now to build digital mindset to prepare ourselves for learning and adjusting to the new digital tools that may be out there. You want to get in front of everybody else and figure out how to use those tools to your advantage.