Staff really are 'too smart' to think AI isn't a threat to their jobs or how they do their work, Kavanaugh told CNBC. — Reuters
The fate of many jobs as the AI revolution progresses remains very much a he-said, she-said situation. Some predictions say AI will take 10% of jobs across the US, while other experts say chill out, it's not going to do that. Then too, global bodies like the International Monetary Fund say it's already started to shape the global labour market.
Now Jim Kavanaugh, the billionaire CEO of World Wide Technology, an IT services company, has spoken up. In his opinion, the most important thing a company leader can do when addressing the implications of AI tech is just to be honest. Staff really are "too smart" to think AI isn't a threat to their jobs or how they do their work, Kavanaugh told CNBC.
Kavanaugh spoke very directly about how company leaders should get real about AI. "If you think you're going to try to game this, and that you're going to tell employees nothing's going to change and everything's going to be fine," he says, then that's "just BS." Bringing AI into the workplace means "there's going to be all kinds of changes," Kavanaugh explained.
His words tally with many recent reports about how AI is impacting workplaces: In April, the CEO of pharma giant Moderna gave a particularly striking example of this when he said he expects his staff to consult ChatGPT up to 20 times a day to help "reinvent all of Moderna's business processes – in science, in legal, in manufacturing, everywhere."
We also know AI is changing rapidly, and as it advances beyond the basic chatbot systems of today and becomes more capable, more companies are embracing it. As adoption rates grow, the way AI impacts workforces may expand too, meaning Kavanaugh's words may carry more weight as time moves on.
The entrepreneur's advice to fellow CEOs is simple.
"Be as transparent as possible and always honest with their employees about where they stand," he said. That's solid advice for almost any change in the workplace, AI-centric or not. Kavanaugh also said "everybody should be a student of AI and tech and not be afraid of it," even though neither he nor anyone else knows exactly how and when AI is going to impact everything within a given company. He also stressed he truly believes AI holds great promise to improve the working world as "an enhancer and an accelerator of what we're all doing."
This chimes with some good press for AI in a recent magazine article by MIT labour economist and economics professor David Autor. Autor's big-picture view as a workplace expert is that AI is fundamentally different from workplace changes driven by computing and automation, which have already replaced many jobs. The mid-20th-century office typing pools are now a relic of yesteryear, for example.
Autor thinks AI is more of a technological force multiplier that could even change the workplace and the job market for the better. By leveraging the expertise contained in AI systems, workers could open "the door to new possibilities" and even allow some people to expand their skill sets so much they can "take on some of the work that is now the province of elite, and expensive, experts like doctors, lawyers, software engineers." – Inc./Tribune News Service
