Written by Deloitte's Roisin Finnegan and Jamie Mudge
Last Friday saw Deloitte Ventures in Northern Ireland co-host its first New Forums event in Danske FinTech Hub, with Catalyst. The provocation for this session was AI: Evolution or Revolution? It was a well-received and topical session with many insightful and challenging debates surfaced.
Deloitte Ventures is the firm’s innovation capability and enables the firm to proactively respond to disruption. As a team, we invest in new business models and tech enabled offerings. NewForums is an open innovation experience that brings together diverse thinkers for an immersive and insightful conversation hosted by Deloitte Ventures.
AI and its ability to augment human workers is one of the most influential forces shaping the future of work. It is something that everyone has an opinion on and this was reflected by the energy and contributions from the audience. We had a number of experts in the room including Brendan Digney founder of Machine Eye, a company that uses machine learning to improve safeguarding in agricultural machinery. Karol Satka who leads Deloitte’s AI efforts in NI was also present. The audience of just over 50 individuals from within and external to Deloitte split into three groups to focus on different themes relating to AI.
Each topic threw up particular themes and observations; it was an ever-evolving discussion. There was an appreciation of the benefits that the adoption and evolvement of AI could bring to both business and wider society, but there was an equal focus on the numerous challenges that the group perceived would result from the increased presence of AI in our working and personal lives.
The changing workplace and productivity was a recurring theme. Regardless as to whether jobs would be lost, augmented by AI or different in the future, there was general consensus that re-skilling, retraining and life-long learning were inevitable. Recent research from Deloitte Insights that interviewed 523 executives from different industries shows that over 90 per cent of organisations expect AI to increase their workforce capacity. But almost two-thirds of organisations have not considered what proportion of their workforce needs to retrain as a result of automation.
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Education was a key focus area for people. Most believed that schools and universities have key roles to play in preparing people for the digital workplace of the future. Deloitte research shows that currently almost half the population of the EU is considered as lacking basic digital skills and one-third of the European citizens reportedly have no or almost no digital skills at all.Both the EU and national governments aim to close the skills gap and increase digital skills significantly through a wide range of initiatives, one of the most important being vocational education and training.
An interesting question that was raised was around the role and responsibility that business and Government have to play in this. What responsibility does business have in re-skilling displaced individuals? Without suitable opportunities to reskill or upskill, workers with a lower level of educational achievement could struggle to find a secure new position in the event of their current job being automated.
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It was suggested that whilst change brings opportunity, government has a responsibility to ensure that we are brought on the journey together. They need to lead by positive example. Currently it was suggested there is a lack of cohesion and messaging on AI and the positive impacts it could have on the individual and society. It was suggested that a way for political leaders to gain trust is to embrace digital change by adopting technologies to improve the provision of public services and foster innovation. Collaboration with industry and education will raise the importance of life-long learning.
It was observed by the groups that a lack of knowledge and insight amongst business owners on the benefits of machine learning and AI for their business might result in business being technically and culturally incapable of relevant implementation. Deloitte insight survey results support this by showing a significant number of survey respondents (48 per cent) admit to neither thinking about nor implementing an intelligent automation strategy that includes AI. Another 36 per cent include AI in their strategy but not at scale. Only 11 per cent of organisations are currently scaling solutions that include AI.
The focus on people and the implications it could potentially have on us was very apparent. What would we do if suddenly our 40 hour working week became 32 hours, or we all became part of the gig economy and employed on a contractor type basis. Implications on mental health and employee experience were discussed. It was acknowledged that whilst the concept of a ‘job’ is changing, fundamentally a positive employee experience will not change. The same fundamentals like meaningful work and opportunities to learn will remain the same.
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The above is just a small sample of the interesting and engaging discussion we had as a group. The key questions that were raised around privacy, ethics, trust, legislation, regulation and other topics could run for many more pages. Suffice to say people have more questions than answers when it comes to the future and AI.
