Is AI the future of work?
Technology leaders say artificial intelligence (AI) is the future of work, but the reality for business leaders is more complicated.
The world of work is clearly moving in this direction, as the government recently announced plans to offer free training to British adults on how to effectively use AI in their work.
But researchers have warned that introducing AI into the workplace is a tricky process, different for each business, and cannot be boiled down into a simple course.
Roa Powell, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: “Workers also need support to build judgement, critical thinking, physical skills, leadership and the confidence to use these tools safely.”
With the initial AI boom a few years old, and with some claiming the bubble has already burst, it is easy to assume that companies across the country have already rolled out AI across their offices.
AI adoption still gaining traction
But businesses are in fact being slow to introduce AI into their processes. Even in the sectors leading AI adoption – which are financial services, IT and telecoms – only 36 per cent of business leaders have begun to teach their staff how to use artificial intelligence in their work, according to a recent Barclays report.
And in other sectors the takeup is even lower. 21 per cent of leaders in leisure and hospitality businesses and 20 per cent of manufacturing bosses say they have started to roll out AI in their workplaces.
While significant, these figures seem slightly mismatched to the hype around AI. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, according to Oliver Kingshott, who leads AI adoption at Halkin, one of London’s largest flexible workspace providers.
It means business leaders are being deliberate about how AI can work for their firms, rather than using it because they feel they should.
Oliver said: “Frontier model capabilities are advancing exponentially — but actual business adoption is crawling along linearly. Most companies are still figuring out where to start.
“The businesses that will win aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest AI budgets; they’re the ones that can do the work of discovering the specific pain points in their industry, while being technically literate enough to build solutions.”
Rise of ‘AI slop’ boosts in-person work
Perhaps the most negative association with artificial intelligence today is “AI slop,” a term used to refer to fake, seemingly meaningless AI-generated videos which are often found clogging up social media feeds.
While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has hailed this as a symbol of social media’s “third phase,” other tech leaders have pledged to crack down, with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan directing his team to crack down on “low quality, repetitive content”.
While some warn that this “slop” is driving people away from AI, even its benefits, Oliver believes there is an upside.
As social media users become increasingly alienated by the artificial content they view on their screens, they are beginning to value their in-person, authentic experiences more than ever – and many of these come at work.
“As the internet becomes saturated with ‘slop’ that saps human attention, people are increasingly craving authentic, physical experiences,” he said.
“For a workspace and hospitality brand, that’s genuinely exciting — it means the care we put into the details, the furniture, the lighting, and how we welcome our guests, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. AI is making the human touch more valuable than ever.”
Taking advantage of the ‘jagged frontier’
As “AI slop” and awkward, frustrating chat-bot interactions teach people to value their real-life working relationships, the question remains of how employees can make AI work for them.
Using AI in a way which saves time rather than wastes it is difficult, and this is partly due to a concept called the “jagged frontier”. While AI is highly developed at some tasks, it lags far behind humans in others, meaning its frontier is not a solid line but an uneven edge.
“The key is finding the right tasks,” Oliver said. “At Halkin, putting a chatbot between our team and our members would be a total erosion of the trust that we’ve worked so hard to build.
“But using AI to generate beautiful, accurate workspace proposals in seconds is a no-brainer. You need the courage to run live experiments to establish which tasks are suitable for AI.”
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