AI may change your job but it won’t eliminate many, employment experts say

Alorica, an Irvine, California-based company that operates a global customer service center, has launched a smart translation tool that allows its representatives to communicate with customers in 200 languages ​​and 75 languages.

So an Alorica representative who speaks, say, only Spanish can deliver a balky print complaint or an incorrect bank statement from a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Alorica may not need to hire another representative who speaks Cantonese.

This is the power of AI. And, perhaps, a risk: Maybe companies won’t need more workers – and will reduce some jobs – if chatbots can handle the work. But the problem is, Alorica is not cutting jobs. Still hiring aggressively.

The experience at Alorica – and other companies, including furniture retailer IKEA – suggests that AI may not be the job killer that many fear. In fact, technology can be like the achievements of the past – the steam engine, electricity, the Internet: That is, eliminating some tasks and creating others. And perhaps making employees the most productive of all, to the benefit of themselves, their employers and their wealth.

Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said he thinks AI “will affect a lot of jobs — probably every job in some way. But I don’t think it’s going to lead to, say, unemployment. We’ve seen some great technological developments in our history, and those haven’t led to an increase in the number of jobs.” unemployment. Technology destroys and creates. There will be new jobs.”

At its core, artificial intelligence empowers machines to perform tasks that were once thought to require human intelligence. The technology has existed in early versions for many years, it was invented by the computer problem-solving program, Logic Theorist, built in the 1950s at what is now Carnegie Mellon University. More recently, consider voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa. Or IBM’s chess computer, Deep Blue, which managed to beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

AI began to recognize people in 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI development tool that can chat, write computer code, create music, craft notes and provide a wide range of information. The advent of artificial intelligence has raised concerns that chatbots will replace freelance writers, editors, coders, telemarketers, customer service providers, police officers and many others.

“AI will solve many modern jobs, and this will change the way many modern jobs work,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May.

However, the widespread assumption that AI chatbots will replace workers, as robots take over most of the jobs in factories and warehouses, is not happening by any means – not yet. And it probably won’t.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said last month that it found “little evidence that AI will disrupt all employment.” way.

He mentioned a study this year led by David Autor, an economist at MIT: He said that 60% of the jobs that Americans did in 2018 did not exist in 1940, as they were created by technology that was invented later.

Outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which monitors job cuts, said it had not seen much evidence of job cuts that would result from AI-based job-savings.

“I don’t think we’ve started to see companies saying they’re going to save a lot of money or cut jobs they don’t want anymore because of this,” said Andy Challenger, who heads the marketing team. “That may come in the future. But it hasn’t played yet.”

At the same time, the fear that AI poses a serious threat to some sectors of work is not unfounded.

Consider Suumit Shah, the Indian entrepreneur who caused a stir last year by boasting that he fired 90% of his customer service staff with a social media platform called Lina. The move by Shah’s company, Dukaan, which helps clients set up e-commerce sites, reduced the response time to inquiries from one minute, 44 seconds to “instant.” It has also reduced the time required to solve problems from two hours to just three minutes.

“It’s all about AI’s ability to solve complex questions in detail,” Shah said via email.

The cost of providing customer service, he said, dropped by 85%.

“Difficult? Yes. Essentials? Of course,” Shah wrote on X.

Dukaan has expanded its use of AI in marketing and analytics. Equipment, Shah said, continues to grow strongly.

“It’s like upgrading from a Corolla to a Tesla,” he said. “What used to take hours now takes minutes. And accuracy is on a whole new level. “

Similarly, researchers at Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research and London’s Imperial College Business School found in a study last year that employment for writers, coders and photographers fell less than eight months after ChatGPT arrived.

A 2023 study conducted by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University determined that telemarketers and teachers of English and foreign languages ​​are the ones who work the most with languages ​​such as ChatGPT. But being identified with AI doesn’t mean losing your job. AI can also handle tedious work, freeing up humans to do more creative work.

Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, launched a customer service chatbot in 2021 to handle simple questions. Instead of cutting jobs, IKEA retrained 8,500 customer service workers to perform tasks such as advising customers on interior design and making difficult customer calls.

Chatbots can also be deployed to make employees more productive, augmenting their work rather than eliminating it. A study by Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond of MIT tracked 5,200 customer service agents at a Fortune 500 company that used an artificial intelligence assistant. The AI ​​tool provided valuable insights into customer care. It also provided links to related content.

Those who used a chatbot, the study found, showed 14% more productivity than their peers who did not. He also handled more calls and completed them quickly. The largest gains – 34% – came from unskilled, unskilled workers.

At Alorica’s call center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a customer representative struggles to find the information she needs to make quick calls. After Alorica trained him to use AI tools, his “hold time” — how long it takes to answer a customer’s calls — dropped in four months from 14 minutes to just over seven minutes.

Over six months, AI tools helped one team of 850 Alorica reps reduce their handling time to six minutes, from just eight minutes. They can now make 10 calls an hour instead of eight – an extra 16 calls in an eight-hour day.

Alorica’s agents can use AI tools to quickly learn about customers who call – to see their call history, say, or to find out if they’ve called before and hang up in frustration.

Imagine, said Mike Clifton, Co-CEO of Alorica, a customer complains that he received the wrong product. The agent can “hit the spot, and the product will be there tomorrow,” he said. ” ‘Is there anything else I can help you with? No?’ Click. It’s done. Thirty seconds in and out.”

Now the company is starting to use its Real-time Voice Language Translation tool, which allows Alorica customers and agents to speak and hear each other in their own languages.

“It allows (Alorica reps) to call every call they receive,” said Rene Paiz, vice president of customer service. “I don’t have to outsource” just to find someone who speaks another language.

However, Alorica is not cutting jobs. It continues to look for work – increasingly, those who are comfortable with new technology.

“We’re hiring fast,” says Paiz. “We have a lot of work to do out there.”