CIOs need to help employees transition to an AI-enabled workforce: Gartner survey

The chief information officers at large enterprises need to prepare their employees for a workplace where they would be required to do more creative work as machines take over routine and repetitive work, says technology research and advisory firm Gartner.

The CIOs should support their organisations as they navigate the transition to an artificial intelligence-enabled workforce, Gartner said in a media statement. It added that while AI will give employees the time to do more, organisations will need to train and retrain their employees in anticipation of AI investments.

However, Gartner said that humans are a strong element in AI and the technology needs human assistance to become better.

“Pairing AI with humans create a new decision-making model in which AI offers new facts and options, but the head remains human, as does the heart. People need to identify the most suitable answers among the different ones that AI offers,” said Svetlana Sicular, research vice president at Gartner.

According to Sicular, people need to trust machines and that was a condition for enterprises to successfully adopt AI. “People will learn how to do less routine work. They will be trained in new tasks. Newborns need an adult human to survive. AI is no different and serves human purposes and is developed by people,” she added.  

Gartner's survey also found that AI eliminated fewer jobs than expected earlier. Among the organisations that have begun AI initiatives, almost a quarter of them saw more jobs being created. According to the survey, conducted among 4,019 consumers in the UK and US, 77% of employees, whose employers are yet to launch an AI initiative, expect machines to eliminate jobs.

"In cases where consulting an AI system has saved money, time and distress, not doing so might become unethical in the future. The future lies not in a battle between people and machines, but in a synthesis of their capabilities, of humans and AI working together,” said Helen Poitevin, research senior director at Gartner.