Dull, dirty, dangerous: the jobs bosses plan to hand to AI

Global CEOs see AI in the workplace as a productivity booster, not a way to sack workers, according to Gartner analyst Kristin Moyer.

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Global CEOs see AI in the workplace as a productivity booster, not a way to sack workers, according to Gartner analyst Kristin Moyer.

“The way they want to use it is for human-centric productivity, to get the dull, dirty and dangerous work out of the way,” she says.

“Most CEOs managing today haven’t had to manage in a high inflation, high interest rate environment,” she added.

“A lot of them – and the market too – are just hoping interest rates are going to start coming down now (but) we need to do more than just rely on GDP growth resuming and start leaning more heavily into productivity with technology.”

In Australia for a Gartner conference, the US-based Moyer says that with the global skills shortage at crisis levels, CEOs do not see generative AI, such as ChatGPT, as a way to reduce headcount but as a technology to help boost growth.

“There’s a lot more work that can be done around productivity,” Moyer says.

“Productivity is really the only way to manage through talent issues. With changing demographics and ageing societies around the world, it’s not going to get better.

“ A recession isn’t going to fix the talent crisis. It’s really about productivity.”

Moyer says AI is a transformational technology for CEOs now intent on developing a “post-crisis strategy” after Covid-19, geopolitical conflict and war.

The strategy has to include a focus on sustainability, something that could be helped by AI’s ability to monitor and predict climate trends, she says.

Manufacturers, for example, could use AI to crunch data to run plants in a more energy-efficient way. Airbus used satellites and AI for predictions in areas such as logistics. Another example is using AI to predict rainfall to help in decisions about where to plant crops.

“We also have to be mindful of (AI) because it consumes a lot of electricity, a lot of water because of cooling needed in data centres,” Moyer says.

“So it’s going to create greenhouse gas emissions, but we think it’s going to reduce more greenhouse gas emissions than it creates.

“It’s very transformational, but it should not be used for everything. That’s always the danger. Everybody’s so excited about AI right now so they want to use it for everything, and it should not be used for everything. You want to bring the right tool to the right problem.”

Moyer says we are at the start of the transformation of business: “This is going to be playing out for the next 10 or 20 years, just like when the internet and e-commerce came along … this is a very long-term and exciting business transformation we’re just at the beginning of.”

She says that last year CEOs were preparing for recession and focused on “cost optimisation” but there was now more hope of a soft landing and leaders had “more of a cautious sense of stability” and were focused on growth and technology.

“Last year, the R word was recession, this year, the R word is risk,” she says. “They know they need to make some big moves, and it’s always risky when you do that.”

CEOs are worried about the geopolitical risks but also technology disruption, and how AI “is going to disrupt my particular industry, and how should I react, how quickly do I need to react?”