Why Artificial intelligence SHOULD take your job and crown you as leader.

Even if the title can be controversial, let’s start the article by analyzing the social situation during Industrial Revolution when automation has been introduced to the cotton industry.

Weavers on power looms were suddenly able to produce 2.5 times the amount of coarse cloth per hour a weaver on a handloom could. Later improved technology would generate another twentyfold increase in output per hour.

As the amount of human labor per yard of cloth fell, cloth became cheaper and cheaper as consequence people bought more, increasing the demand for that good.

This resulted in the number of weavers in the US quadrupling between 1830 and 1900 instead of falling.

And this is not the only example that we have had! Let’s pick an another industry, the banking one.

As the economist and technologist, Bessen discovered, similar happened when ATMs were introduced into the banking industry.

Everyone assumed that the automated teller machines would eliminate human bank tellers.

Of course, this happened and many people lost the job. In the early 1990s when ATMs started being introduced at scale the average bank branch in an urban area required about twenty-one tellers. Then with ATMS, this was cut to about thirteen tellers.

However, thinking about that, it was cheaper to open branches, as consequence banks started opening up many more in convenient areas to serve customers, and as a platform for branding and marketing.

Once again the demand for humans bank tellers increased, but their job was different.

With automation, their work was no longer to be a machine.

The new tellers hired in the automation era have a different tasks. Their work was no longer about counting money all day and doing routine transactional tasks that could be done by self-service.

The work became about building relationships with customers, cross selling products and performing other tasks that involved soft skills like human engagement empathy and judgment.

This means that the challenge is to look for a new job inside the old one. Look beyond the scope of the original activity to figure out where value can be created.

Automation allows people to gain a new perspective in ways that would not have been feasible at that level of scale in the past.

As AI continues to augment our work, it’s essential to be aware of how this augmentation will change the way we work.

To embrace this change it is nowadays necessary understand which AI tools You might adopt for innovate your business. This can help You and Your company to understaind how to shift the way of working with having an AI as co-worker.
To better understand this idea let’s think in terms of going from a musician to a conductor.

This shift means to go from playing an instrument to leading and directing a musical ensemble. A conductor is responsible for overseeing the interpretation and performance of a musical score, communicating musical ideas, and ensuring that all musicians in the ensemble are playing together cohesively and harmoniously.
This requires a deep understanding of music theory, orchestration, and performance practice, as well as strong leadership skills and the ability to communicate effectively with musicians.

Today, the majority of us are workers specialized in one particular area, similar to musicians. However, with the advancements of artificial intelligence, we will have more AI assistants that can do our knowledge-based jobs for us.

As a conductor, it’s not that you lack knowledge in each subject but rather that you stop doing and start leading. While this can be exciting for many, it can also be an uncomfortable task for some.
We are all leaders and as much the AI advance in our workspace, as much we are called to discover which type of leader we want to be in the AI near future.

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