Introduction

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a popular technology present since many years, but it recently got even more popular with the advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. AI is a general term that includes different technologies such as Machine Learning, Artificial Neural Networks, Generative AI, and more. Many questions arose after much attention has been dedicated to Generative AI, as people started considering its potential effects on society and ethics. Automating repetitive operations is one of the most obvious benefits of incorporating generative AI into commercial processes. Businesses can do this to drastically cut down on the amount of time spent on things like data entry, customer support, and administrative tasks. Thanks to this, employees could start focusing on more complex tasks that call for human creativity and knowledge. Additionally, it can also benefit companies and people by producing insights and suggestions based on a great deal of data, enabling the formulation of smarter decisions and improved operations optimization (Plastino & Purdy, 2018). Furthermore, these insights could produce could spark new ideas that might give the generation of new products and services, allow companies to enter new markets and sources of income.

To conclude, artificial intelligence technologies will not produce economic crises and mass unemployment. Similar to how computers and the internet changed our world few decades ago (Richards, 2011), AI will revolutionize many aspects of our society. Starting from how we create text, videos, and art to how companies operate. This mass shift and wave of innovation will ultimately produce more opportunities and welfare for everybody.

AI influence on society: Analogies with the internet revolution

The dawn of the internet holds many similarities with what is currently happening with the evolution of AI systems. And has the flourishing of our society demonstrates, the internet was able to produce enormous benefits for humanity. With the evolution from no web to Web 1.0 and to Web 2.0, people had access to large amount of information and a myriad of tools that revolutionized their jobs. As an example, with the Web 2.0, a collaborative and more communicative attitude among employees has been encouraged. Tools such as emails, instant messaging, and video conferencing, not only improved the speed of communication across the world, but shaped new cultures inside companies, deviating from the classical narrow hierarchies from the old industrial revolution enterprises. The spread of seamless communication improved professional relationships, teamwork, productivity, and permitted the emergence of new companies and industries (Richards, 2011). Moreover, AI tools are already playing a vital role in companies to increase their efficiency and ability to extract valuable insights from vast volumes of data. A noteworthy application is the ease of access to those insights by simply posing questions to generative AI systems, which possess a tremendous technological potential.

Effects on employment

The labor market is going through major changes that have an influence on people’s jobs, employment, and society at large. Because AI can complete tasks more quickly, more effectively, and more cheaply, certain professions, particularly those that are process-oriented, may disappear. People and society may adjust to the shifting labor market by fusing AI with human abilities, coming up with new methods to deliver services, and satisfying consumer demand. Furthermore, education will play a big role in this trend and shift in the labor market. Every individual who will not possess adequate education levels, may struggle in the near future to protect their employment. Any technological breakthrough favor individuals with higher education and the introduction of AI will follow the same path (Wang and Wang, 2022).

In conclusion, In the coming years, it will be increasingly important for workers to learn to the use of AI tools, especially following the emergence of generative AI systems which could potentially be used in many computer-related tasks. People with these skills will have greater career option and enjoy many more opportunities than those who will not adapt. Among tech companies, it is now becoming popular the slogan “AI will not replace you, people who use AI will”, highlighting the growing demand for AI specific skills. These skills might become essential for workers for finding a job and for companies to retain a competitive edge in the industry. While this trend may be daunting for some, it resembles the same development that has already been experienced when companies began requiring to potential new hires to possess some levels of proficiency with computers and relevant software.

AI and creativity

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence with the capability of creating text, images, computer code, which will shift the way we think about creativity. In the case of text, it uses complex machine learning algorithms which predicts the probability of the next best word based on an input. In this way, it is able to create coherent answers with surprising accuracy. The human involvement is necessary throughout the whole process of text or image generation, giving raise to new professional figures namely “prompt engineers”. The task of these engineers is to generate questions to be fed to the AI in order to receive the most accurate results possible. The rise of the prompt engineers as new professional figure indicates how varied and complex these systems are, and how much potential can be extracted by companies to improve many different business functions. This is described in a Harvard Business Review article (Davenport & Mittal, 2022) where is outlined how Generative AI can be used creative activities such as marketing, strategy, ideas generation, and more.

Marketing may be the one function with the most apparent applications for Generative AI systems. Image generating tools, such as Midjourney, can be used to generate compelling images that could be use in ad campaigns among others. Midjourney, which recently released version 5.1 of its system, is able to generate images in a vast array of styles, based on the prompt give. In their website, under the “showcase” section, is it possible to admire incredibly photo-realistic generated images as well as cartoon style artworks. The use of such tools can drastically reduce the necessity to hire artists, especially for startups or companies with low capital availability while still achieving high level results. In addition to image generation, text generation will constitute a large portion of new creative methods at disposal to people with using Generative AI systems. The accuracy of such systems to produce meaningful results, has already been harnessed for ad and email campaigns, blog posts, copywriting, and even writing computer code (Wilson & R. Dougherty, 2020).

The new GTP-4 developed by OpenAI, showed remarkable improvements from its predecessor models, demonstrating that advancements in this technology are rapid and meaningful (OpenAI, 2023). GPT-4 was able to pass various exams with greater scores than the previous GPT-3.5 model and in some cases score higher than the average students. As an example, GTP-4 was able to score in the 88th percentile for the LSAT exams which is design for humans, while GTP-3.5 scored on the 40th percentile. In addition, GPT-4 not only can better analyze text, but it is also able to receive visual inputs, analyze their meaning, and give accurate answers. Furthermore, it has increased capabilities in understanding many different languages and successfully answer exam questions in languages other than English.

AI impacts on industries

Today, there is still uncertainty about the potential effects of AI on innovation, jobs, productivity, and growth. Nonetheless, the potential for gaining a competitive advantage for anyone willing to invest early into this technology is extremely high. This potential comes from a combination between cost-efficiency, increase analysis capabilities of large amount of data, and continuous technological breakthroughs among others.

Innovation and efficiency

As described by Plastino and Purdy (2018), automation is one of the areas where extreme gains can be made through the implementation of AI in routine business activities. Companies such as Tesla, already integrate third party’s analysis software to receive early warning on potential problems by analyzing millions of incidents and propose alternative solutions to avoid loss of money and materials. Additionally, companies such as Conatix, which utilizes machine learning algorithms to boost business research, is able to help generate high-quality insights from large amounts of data in collaboration with the human guidance.

Furthermore, AI has the ability to accelerate innovation among any industry. This potential is exemplified by the drug company Berg Health, which was able to move from the hypothesis phase to trials in a much faster way by using an AI-supported approach with their research. It is estimated that approach could cut cost up to 1.3 billion dollars which could be reinvested in the research of other drugs and ultimately benefitting the whole society. This example is not an isolated case, the whole healthcare industry has today a high adoption rate with the potential to adopt even more AI technologies. The use of deep learning and neural networks in combination with human expertise, can help doctors increase the speed of diagnosis of certain diseases. This of course, is not limited to only medical application but is applicable to a wide range of industries that can produce a large number of new business opportunities. Such of these opportunities can come from an increase in hardware demand from the robotics industries which heavily rely on AI systems to train their machine. Additionally, new AI software and cloud services will be part of these new segments around artificial intelligence which will foster innovation and might push the market revenue up to two thousand billion total by 2030 (Next Move Strategy Consulting, 2023).

Future opportunities

The ability to learn from vast amounts of data and a nearly immensurable number of ways where AI can be applied, might give the rise of new industries or at least new market opportunities. Artificial Intelligence systems are not a new technology but in the last year it sparked more attention and curiosity after the public release of generative AI systems. Many people worry about its implications in issues such as ethics, economy, and employment. One thing that is evident is that AI will foster innovation and create new opportunities for many. Thanks to its intrinsic ability to process vast amount of data, identify patterns, and generate insights, AI will accelerate discoveries and advancements across many industries (Plastino and Purdy ,2018). Forecasts indicates that the potential market of AI related products and services will grow exponentially in the future (Next Move Strategy Consulting, 2023) while employment is highly likely to follow the same path that the introduction of the computer and internet which didn’t create mass joblessness but ultimately created new jobs and new industries. Therefore, by learning and adapting to this new technology, the future might hold more innovation, prosperity, and opportunities which ultimately will benefit the humanity as a whole.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it seems evident that the fears of AI triggering a catastrophe among nations are unfounded. Drawing parallels to the impact of the internet and computers in the past, the artificial intelligence technologies will generate innovation and opportunities for all. Rather than displacing jobs, this new technology will give rise to new markets and industries while enhancing the productivity of existing companies. As people will adapt to this new technological phase, the whole humanity can look forward to a future marked by prosperity, progress, and opportunity.

References

Davenport, T. H., & Mittal, N. (2022, November 16). How Generative AI Is Changing Creative Work. Harvard Business Review. hbr.org/2022/11/how-generative-ai-is-changing-creative-work

Next Move Strategy Consulting. (2023, January). Artificial Intelligence Market Size and Share | Analysis - 2030. Next Move Strategy Consulting. Retrieved May 15, 2023, from nextmsc.com/report/artificial-intelligence-market

OpenAI. (2023, March 15). GPT-4 Technical Report. arXiv.org. arxiv.org/abs/2303.08774

Plastino, E., & Purdy, M. (2018). Game changing value from Artificial Intelligence: eight strategies. Strategy & Leadership, 46(1), 16–22. doi.org/10.1108/sl-11-2017-0106

Richards, J. (2011). What has the internet ever done for employees? A review, map and research agenda. Employee Relations, 34(1), 22–43. doi.org/10.1108/01425451211183246

Wang, S., & Wang, W. (2022). The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Labor Force in the Primary and Secondary Industries. In Advances in economics, business and management research. Atlantis Press. doi.org/10.2991/aebmr.k.220307.140

Wilson, H. J., & R. Daugherty, P. (2020, September 23). The Next Big Breakthrough in AI Will Be Around Language. Harvard Business Review. hbr.org/2020/09/the-next-big-breakthrough-in-ai-will-be-around-language