Stories | The Forum | How to embrace AI in the workplace

Decorative image — The revolution is coming
Is AI coming for your job? Yes, but not in the way that you might think, says the FT’s technology reporter, Stephanie Stacey.
Written by
Stephanie Stacey

What was the most important piece of technology in the office when you began your career? For Louise Ballard, who’s enjoyed a three-decade-long career in PR, it was the fax machine. She remembers anxious negotiations and uncertainty when her workplace first connected to the internet and, later, started expecting staff to use smartphones — both of which quickly became as routine as her old paper notepad.

But Ballard, who launched her own digital consultancy startup Atheni last December, is confident that the rapid rise of Generative AI will bring an even bigger — and better — technological revolution to the workplace. She also believes that this is the first new technology that will specifically advantage older workers, a group she is proud to count herself among.

“I am not a digital native by any means,” says Ballard. “But when I first tried out ChatGPT, I realised quite quickly that all my years of work and all of my experience could be magnified.” She acknowledges, however, that her optimism often takes colleagues by surprise. The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022 sparked a wave of fear among white-collar workers, most of whom had been sheltered from the successive waves of technological unemployment that have previously hit industries like manufacturing. According to a survey last year by Forrester, however, 36% of global desk workers now expect to lose their jobs to AI automation within the next decade.

“I’m not a digital native by any means, but I realised quite quickly that all my years of experience could be magnified.”
Louise BallardCo-founder, Atheni AI

Some of the technology’s leading pioneers have — perhaps deliberately — emphasised a gloomy picture of the future of employment. Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI told The Atlantic last July: “Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.”

But Forrester analyst Michael O’Grady says that the risk of office jobs being automated out of existence has been overegged. In fact, he believes that the new technology will, at least in the next 10 years, improve far more jobs than it takes away: “These models can really help augment roles and improve productivity: They’re not just there to suppress roles.”

Ballard, too, is confident that AI will ultimately empower workers if they can learn how to make the most of the technology rather than trying to compete with it. “It can do a better job than you can alone — but so can a combine harvester,” she says. “That doesn’t mean that a human doesn’t need to be in the driving seat.”

Speaking at the 2024 Web Summit conference in Lisbon in November, Microsoft's vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said that the biggest factor for business success in the emerging age of Generative AI will not be building the best models, but “getting people to adopt the technology broadly”.

Researchers have warned, however, that this adoption is often stymied by fear and professional insecurity, as well as a lack of education and transparency.

A survey by workplace messaging service Slack, published in November, found that 33% of US desk workers were using AI tools by this August, only slightly up from 32% in March. Almost half of workers polled said they would still be uncomfortable telling their manager that they had used the technology — largely because they were afraid of being seen as incompetent or lazy, or of being accused of cheating.

Many of the workers polled by Slack also said they worried that the benefits of AI would go not to them, but to their bosses. While most believed that AI could, in an ideal world, allow them to cut back on boring administrative duties and spend more time on meaningful tasks, they worried that any productivity gains would be offset by simply being handed a heavier workload.

“You are able to look at things from thousands of different lenses because you can simply put yourself in different positions.”
Louise BallardCo-founder, Atheni AI

Ballard warns that too few employers understand the importance of openly communicating with their staff about the potential benefits of AI, and setting clear expectations for how they should use it. “If you want to make the most of AI then you need to take people through this journey,” she says.

On a personal level, she says already “couldn’t imagine” her life as an entrepreneur without AI and is “honestly using it every day”. How, then, could you start to harness the power of AI for the good of your own business?

Ballard uses AI as an additional brain; one that’s capable of quickly synthesising huge quantities of information. When putting together a recent grant application, for example, she uploaded “dozens of files” to Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude. These included the specific application criteria, an array of previous company reports and pitch drafts, and a selection of carefully curated articles about how to write a good grant application. She then repeatedly regenerated and finetuned Claude’s responses until she was satisfied.

She says this level of preparation – and a willingness to iterate and refine the output – is key to getting the most out of AI: “It’s not about trying to do everything from thin air: You have to give it the information.” Completing the application still took at least half a day, she says, but it was a significant timesaver on the three-day period she’d historically budgeted for this kind of task.

Ballard has also used tools like ChatGPT and Claude as a sounding board ahead of investor pitches and client meetings for her startup Atheni. She does this by asking the bots to assume different personas — from a bullish investor to a nervous lawyer — and critique her proposals. “You are able to look at things from thousands of different lenses because you can simply put yourself in different positions,” she says.

“AI can do a better job than you can alone — but so can a combine harvester. That doesn’t mean that a human doesn’t need to be in the driving seat.”
Louise BallardCo-founder, Atheni AI

Digital content creator and marketing consultant Jade Beason, likewise, uses an array of AI tools to accelerate her work, and says that the resultant productivity improvements have “made it possible to be more creative”. She regularly uses Youtube’s AI-powered Insights tool, for example, to help generate new ideas, scripts and promotional materials for the educational videos she produces as part of her consultancy business.

The tool analyses existing trends, searches and videos on the platform, and uses machine learning to synthesise this information and suggest themes that are likely to appeal to Beason’s audience. “That is something that I used to spend hours trying to figure out and now I can literally just make two clicks and it's going to tell me right there,” she says.

As an employer, Beason was conscious that the workers at her social media and marketing consultancy firm might be resistant to the introduction of AI, not to mention nervous for the future of their jobs. She acknowledges that the rapid pace of technological development “can feel very overwhelming” but says that clear communication — particularly about the continued necessity of adding “human nuances” to computer-generated outputs — helped alleviate many of these early concerns. “It was not me saying “I’m going to replace you with a “machine”, says Beason. “They needed to see how important their own input would still be.”

Fundamentally, then, while AI is impressive, like any other technology it requires a human touch to leverage properly. As Ginni Rometty, former Executive Chairman at IBM puts it: “its power lies not in replacing human intelligence, but in augmenting it.”

Whether you’re a 20-something starting out, or an executive in your prime, generative AI is a tool that presents us all with a huge opportunity, not an all-consuming monster to be feared. How AI is applied in the workplace will continue to evolve, but one thing is certain. AI is coming – but not to take your job.

KEEP EXPLORING

Why the future of the office is neuroinclusive

Future of Work

The revolution is coming

KEEP EXPLORING

Why the future of the office is neuroinclusive

The five 'W’s of asynchronous working

Workplace culture: a moving feast

Cities

London Areas

Cities

London Areas

Cities

London Areas