A few weeks ago I had been to Global Woman Summit in London. And like many other conferences these days one of the speakers did not get tired to tell the audience again and again that during the next few years many people will lose their jobs because of the rise of Artificial Intelligence (short: AI).
Till now nobody knows if this will really become true or not. But it seems to become very popular nowadays to make people afraid of this possible development in the future. I understand that many people are concerned and worried that this could become true.
But let´s look at the facts which I collected from my own experiences by working more than 12 years in the field of Digital Transformation & Industry 4.0. During this very long time period I accompanied many companies on their journey into a Digital Future. These companies work in various industries like Automotive, Energy, Transportation or classical Manufacturing. So, these are all companies operating in fields where pessimists see workplaces destroyed by AI very soon.
So, what happened with the employees in these companies when we introduced new and more efficient tools for the Product Development? What happened while we automated some tasks and working processes? Did all employees in the affected Business Departments lose their jobs? How many people do you think had been fired because of the introduction of these new technologies?
I can tell you the exact figure of fired people in my past projects because of the new technologies completely replaced them: it had been exactly zero!
Nobody was fired because he was not needed any-more! Most people got new tasks and the whole work process got more efficient. Many boring tasks could be removed from the daily work process of the humans and the employees got more interesting task instead. They were even supported in their daily work by the new technologies.
Honestly a very small number of people – I do not remember if it were 3 or 4 during these 12 years – really lost their jobs. But it was not the fault of the new technologies. These people were fired only because of 1 reason:
These people were not be able to arrange their selves with the new technologies and the new working processes. They had shown such a high level of resistance that nothing could make them comfortable with new situation that the employers had no other choice as to split from them. And believe me most companies put really a high effort in making Digital Transformation as comfortable as possible for their employees. Usually a high amount of money is invested in Training, Change Management or Workshops during Digital Transformation projects. But if people are so afraid of new technologies that they refuse and reject everything which is related to these technologies, then sometimes employers have no other choice then to say good-bye to an employee. Because this needs to be done before the employee starts to harm the company with his behavior or even makes the project fail.
What do you think about this topic? Do you know somebody who already lost his or her job because of the introduction of AI?