OPINION PIECE BY: Avashnee Moodley, Head of Marketing, OPPO South Africa
The advent of AI (artificial intelligence) has been described as one of the most significant events in human history; a development that will change the way society functions in a profound way. As this functionality becomes increasingly integrated into the workplace, it is bringing with it many opportunities but also a number of challenges and ethical issues that every business needs to consider and address.
While AI has the potential to create new jobs, enhance productivity, and drive economic growth, it also poses the risk of job displacement, skill mismatches, and greater inequality. That is why it is timely to take a deep dive into exactly what AI functionality is, into some of the challenges it poses, and into how businesses can harness its potential to deliver products and services that are beneficial to users. Equally, it is important to assess the wider value and impact of AI – on society, the economy, the workplace, and the individual.
AI in the workplace
The use of AI in many workplace applications is by no means new. AI is already being used to sort and analyse large amounts of data (commonly known as Big Data) in order to streamline consumer behaviour analysis, improve recordkeeping, enable knowledge management, support digital adoption, provide detailed management reports, analyse benefit options, and provide transcriptions of online meetings, to name just a few.
However, with the introduction of applications such as Chat GPT and DALL-E in 2022, AI has entered new territory. The capabilities that are now being used to enhance both business and consumer applications is what is known as generative AI. This is a form of AI that can not only analyse data but can create original content, such as words, images, music, code, or videos, in response to a user prompt or request.
Networked devices with generative AI capabilities have almost endless applications and are already being used in industries as diverse as healthcare, agriculture, and financial services. The technology has enormous potential to transform the way in which business is done by improving efficiency, reducing costs, and driving innovation.
AI-enabled smartphones
OPPO, which aims to empower individuals and elevate society through innovation, is at the forefront of the AI revolution and has recently launched its first AI-empowered smartphone in South Africa. But what exactly does this mean for consumers and what do mobile devices empowered with generative AI capabilities look like?
From a hardware perspective, they have more advanced chips that are specifically designed to run AI applications and, as importantly, to run these on the device itself rather than in the cloud.
The new chips enhance existing AI capabilities, such as background blur effects and picture editing, but also introduce large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, both of which are widely used to power applications like chatbots. This new technology unlocks many advanced features by, for instance, enabling chatbots to become fully functional virtual assistants that can generate images based on user prompts, write up reports, or summarise meetings.
Users nevertheless need to be alert to the risks associated with this technology as it can be used to create deepfakes; fake identities that look like real ones. Deepfakes are created by leveraging AI to combine existing images, video, or audio of a person to create new – fake – pictures, videos, and audio recordings of that person. They have attracted much attention for their use in fake news, hoaxes, porn, bullying, and financial fraud.
Speaking to CNBC in February 2024, Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, called AI-empowered smartphones a gamechanger.
Apart from many other applications, on-device AI improves security, unlocks new apps, and makes them faster to use since the processing is done on the handset. Eventually, says Wood, this will lead to what is known as ‘anticipatory computing’, with AI being able to learn the user’s behaviour and so make the device more intuitive and predictive.
On this brave new frontier, though, exactly what are the pros and cons – and how do we ensure that we benefit from the pros and minimise the impact of the cons?
On the positive side of the equation, the new technology creates significant employment opportunities, both directly in tech roles and indirectly by enhancing services and digital ecosystems. In order to maximise this benefit, it is essential to invest in education and training at both producer and consumer level, to promote equitable access to AI technologies, and to develop robust ethical guidelines for the deployment of AI technologies. In this way, society can harness the power of AI to create a more inclusive and prosperous future.
This sounds good on paper, but what does it mean in practice?
The impact of AI
In an editorial published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in October 2023, Open AI CEO, Sam Altman, emphasised that, with the development of AI, some jobs are definitely going to disappear. The authors of the piece nevertheless note that the impact of any new technology depends on pivotal decisions about how it is used.
Rapid advances in AI certainly threaten to eliminate many jobs, especially those that involve routine tasks. Clerical work and jobs in regulatory compliance are likely to disappear, as are those that involve simple data collection, data summary, and writing.
But there are two distinctive paths that the AI revolution could take.
One is the path of automation, which is based on the premise that AI’s function is to perform tasks as well as – or even better than – people. And previous waves of automation undoubtedly contributed to a decline in some categories of work and an increase in inequality.
AI could, however, be used to create new kinds of jobs rather than just eliminating existing ones. By providing new tools, education, and information for workers, we could, instead, see new jobs being created as well as a general growth in earnings and a decrease in inequality.
Purposefully and ethically deployed, AI could support human-complementary technological change and deliver tools that will provide valuable information to human decision-makers. And this will not be limited to office workers and professionals. Much of the workforce today – from factory workers to electricians, plumbers, educators, and health care providers – depends on the information needed to facilitate real-time decision-making. With better context-specific information, workers in all of these categories of work will become more productive and, importantly, able to take on new and more complex tasks.
There is no doubt that we stand at a critical juncture in the deployment of AI. It has the potential to transform the world of work, improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and drive innovation. It also has the potential to create many new categories of work, eliminate the need for humans to perform routine tasks, and enhance both services and digital ecosystems. It is up to us to make a conscious decision about how we use AI. By embracing connectivity and harnessing the power of integrated ecosystems, individuals and businesses alike can unlock new levels of productivity, efficiency, and innovation, ushering in a new digital era.
