If you’ve read any tech news articles lately, then you’ve probably seen claims that artificial intelligence will make people jobless and transform the world. The discussion about artificial intelligence is especially heated in the world of academia, and some educators believe that students will soon be able to use AI to write their essays and complete their coursework. While this might sound great for students, will AI actually progress to such a point? As an entrepreneur, you probably don’t need a computer program to write your term paper, but you should know how AI will affect your organization’s operations, so check out this quick overview of the state of AI and what it could mean for your business.
How Will AI Affect University Students?
New AI programs are great at writing factual articles about simple topics, but the technology is not quite up to the task of writing opinion pieces or making interesting points about complex subjects. Currently, AI programs work by scanning thousands of texts about a topic, identifying key commonalities between them, and producing content that matches the style and tone of what people have fed into the program. This allows AI to write unique content that a plagiarism detector probably wouldn’t flag, but AI programs can’t actually incorporate any new information or opinions about a topic into their content.
Instead, they essentially repeat what others have already written in a new format. While this degree of functionality might be good enough for an AI program to write a short, basic description of something like a well-documented historical event, it would be insufficient for an academic paper discussing the historicity of different accounts of that event. University papers require complex analysis and a lot of nuances, which AI just cannot currently replicate, so students will be stuck writing their own papers for the foreseeable future.
How Will AI Impact Your Workplace?
Emerging AI technologies have the potential to make your workers’ jobs easier by automating mundane tasks. For example, if your organization operates a storefront and needs a high volume of product descriptions, then you can streamline the process by running the descriptions through the right AI writer. Still, you’ll probably need someone to define the project’s parameters and edit the program’s work once it has finished this relatively basic task. No matter what industry you’re in, you should not expect to ever take the human element out of your operations.
How Should Your Company Adopt New Technologies?
Hearing the immense fanfare about AI in the workplace, you might feel like you need to incorporate AI into your organization as soon as possible. However, it’s important not to be too hasty when adopting new technologies. You don’t want to waste your organization’s precious resources, so you need to identify a strong use case, find a product that fits your specific needs, and only purchase technologies from reputable companies that provide sufficient training and customer support.
People and Technology Work Better Together
New AI technologies are not ready to convincingly write a student’s essay or replace the modern worker. However, good AI programs can greatly augment an employee’s abilities and improve their workplace performance. You always want to stay updated on the ever-changing role of technology in the workplace, so make sure to check out our other guides on AI, workplace efficiency, and entrepreneurship.
