Man and Machine – Competition or Cooperation

Since artificial intelligence has ceased to be just a fashionable slogan and has become a real business resource, fears among employees about the fate of their jobs have increased. A recent study by Oracle in cooperation with the Otto Beisheim School of Management has shown that this issue worries almost a quarter of employees worldwide. They do not think about the possibilities that joining forces of Man and Machine would bring us, and their fears result from the conviction that the machine must be the opponent of man. However, the reality is quite different.

 There is solid evidence that enterprises need both people and artificial intelligence to succeed in today’s market. So instead of treating man and machine as enemies waging war, let’s look at the possibilities of their cooperation.

Adaptation and Growth

Enterprises need to be more flexible than ever before and ready to react immediately to a consumer, economic and social changes. Consumer expectations are changing, and without maximum flexibility, you cannot provide customers with service at the level they require. Other skills are becoming more important in this new environment. Employee roles such as freelance IT support jobs are developing and changing, and businesses need technology to enable them to implement these new ways of doing work. It is here that artificial intelligence should enter as a supplement and support for human skills, not a substitute for them.

From finance and human resources to marketing, sales, and supply chain – artificial intelligence helps transform traditional roles, teams, and departments. It can optimize decision making, speed up processes and increase efficiency. Most importantly, however, it can take over the more routine parts of each task and thus enable business users to devote time, energy and commitment to activities and areas where people are the best, such as creativity, problem-solving or developing new ideas.

For example, let’s look at the recruitment process. It can be tedious and very time consuming if the recruiter has to break through a large number of unprofiled CVs. Artificial intelligence can recommend the best candidates from the available pool and if they meet the recruiter’s expectations, there will be no need to analyze the remaining ones. What’s more, already at the stage of launching the recruitment project, artificial intelligence can recommend an application for a given position to those who are in our database of candidates who best fit into the sought profile of the role.

Cooperation

Artificial intelligence copes well with repetitive tasks at a lower level and analyzes, and at the same time provides people the freedom by which they can extract the maximum potential from their creative abilities and focus on the “human” side of the task, which can help companies achieve true innovation and stand out from the competition.

Employees don’t have to worry that artificial intelligence will replace them at work. In many situations, it even contributes to the creation of new positions. The use of voice interfaces to support ERP systems increases the possibility of employing the visually impaired or blind. Thanks to such solutions as Oracle ERPCloud or Oracle CX Cloud can create suitable jobs for them in the finance department or customer service department.

Chance

Artificial intelligence ceases to be just a fashionable slogan and becomes an important business resource, which is why more and more companies are realizing that it is a way to improve processes. Employees should not be afraid, however, that this technology will take their jobs in the future, but treat its changes as an opportunity to improve their competences and support in extracting the maximum benefits from technology. Considering the fact that only 10% of enterprises are of the opinion that employees of their finance departments have the skills to use modern technologies, it can be seen that the potential in this area is really huge. Imagine a world in which enterprises can bring out the best in artificial intelligence and people – by raising employees’ qualifications in such a way that they could cooperate with artificial intelligence, and at the same time not only perform their tasks effectively but also do it with the highest productivity. People will soon cease to see artificial intelligence as an enemy that can replace them, and begin to treat it as a partner helping them do their job in an optimal way.