This week on Channel 4, there was an excellent documentary (“Will AI Take My Job?”) showing how AI fared against humans in a variety of jobs, including: doctor, lawyer, photographer, and musical composer.
What set this documentary apart from others is that it didn’t sensationalise or hype AI but rather compared its performance on real-world tasks against humans.
And the result?
Stuart Heritage in The Guardian said: “Last night’s Dispatches was called Will AI Take My Job? Usually when something like this employs a question mark in the title, it’s because the answer is no. Not this time, though, because the sheer overwhelming inevitability of AI taking our jobs is genuinely painful to think about.” (my emphasis)
When AI didn’t win a particular challenge, it was still a very close second – and, importantly, always significantly cheaper.
So, What Does This Mean?
I don’t think the impact on small organisations will be quite as cataclysmic as Mr Heritage believes. For those organisations that embrace it, AI will become a very powerful tool, supporting humans in analysing, creating, evaluating, presenting, recruiting, coding and automating processes. [see our earlier blog post, ’10 ways in which AI can give your business an edge’]
“AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t.”
Ginni Rometty, Former CEO of IBM
But, as fans of Spiderman will know, with great power comes great responsibility.
It is essential that you control how AI is used in your organisation because there are significant risks if AI is used in the wrong way.
To help you to take control, we have undertaken comprehensive research into current AI best practices and compiled these into the Wessex IT AI Policy Template.
You can download this Word document and edit it to meet your specific requirements.
We recommend that you share it with all staff, perhaps making it a core part of your onboarding process. And to ensure that the policy is adhered to, we have also created a shorter AI Checklist.
You can download the Wessex AI Policy Template and AI Checklist here.