One of the key concerns raised regarding the growing presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), aside from the extinction of the human race, is that it will replace jobs.
However, findings from Capgemini reveal that organisations that are implementing AI, either as a pilot or at scale, found that 83% of firms saying that the technology has actually generated new roles in their organisation.
The research, “Turning AI into concrete value: the successful implementers’ toolkit,” surveyed nearly 1,000 organisations with revenues of more than $500 million to see the impact it is having.
The report found that 83% of companies have created new jobs as a result of the technology, with two in three jobs being created at the grade of manager or above. For those that have implemented AI at scale, more than 63% said that the technology has not destroyed any jobs in their organisation.
Read more: HP Inc vs HPE: The underdog comes out on top against the enterprise heavyweight
There’s also evidence to suggest that organisations are seeing AI as a means to reducing the amount of time that employees spend on routine and administrative tasks to enable them to deliver more value.
The majority (71%) said that they have been initiating up-skilling/re-skilling of employees to take advantage of their AI investments. The report found that 89% believe that AI will make complex jobs easier, and that intelligent machine will coexist with humans within their businesses (88%).
“What we really want to do is to use humans to the best of their capabilities,” said Michael Natusch, Global Head of AI at Prudential. “AI is taking away the time humans previously spent on repetitive issues and allowing them to focus on where human intelligence can drive value – for both themselves and for customers.”
Typical use cases for the technology are seen to be across sales, boosting operations, facilitating customer engagement and generating business insights. Businesses are already seeing uplift in sales by 10% since using the technology, whilst 73% believe they can use the tech to increase customer satisfaction, and 65% believe it could reduce future customer churn.
Despite these positives, there are many that are yet to align their investments with business opportunities. Most are missing the low hanging fruit with 58% focused on “need to do” implementations or those that are high complexity/high benefit projects, while 46% are deploying “must do” AI implementations with low complexity/high benefit.
Read more: Fear of sexbots and job losses lead UK public to demand laws for AI
The Capgemini report suggests that if firms were to tackle both problems simultaneously, then they “could see higher business benefits.” The report found that those implementing a large number of “must do” use cases have been able to reduce churn by up to 26% on average.
Ron Tolido, Chief Technology Officer for the Insights & Data Practice at Capgemini, said: “AI has the capacity to revolutionize every business in every market sector; its potential is broad and unlimited. However, we are seeing a large contrast between those who are rolling out applied AI solutions at scale and reaping tangible business benefits, versus those who are simply trialing the technology.
“It’s also quite revealing that organizations are focusing more of their efforts on the more complex AI projects and missing out on simpler projects that could drive quicker returns. Organizations, especially those not yet implementing AI at scale, should focus on those low-complexity, high benefit projects to quickly and better leverage the power of AI.”
