Contrary to widespread fears around how robots will affect jobs, executives around the globe are reporting increased adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots at work and many are welcoming it with love and optimism.
According to the first annual “AI at Work” survey of 8,370 employees, executives and HR leaders in 10 countries, including the UAE, conducted by Oracle and research firm Future Workplace, 64% of people trust a robot more than their supervisors and have half turned into a robot. and their manager for advice.
Rahul Mishra, Vice President for Applications at Oracle Lower Bay, told about the Middle East that 82% of people think that robots can do things better than their supervisors.
In the UAE, respondents said that robots are better at keeping work schedules (42%), solving problems (34%) and providing objective information (32%), and the top three tasks where managers are better than robots are understanding feelings (46%), coaching (32%) and group performance evaluation (25%).
“The UAE is building a future based on innovative technologies. Anything where the role of managers doesn't have an emotional factor, people feel they can work with that based model,” he said.
Invisible operations taking place
The introduction of new technologies is much more here in the UAE, he said and added that the UAE is a young state built by expats and the generation is a mixture of X, Z and youth.
In addition, he said that they [the youth] are mainly considering technology that supports economic growth.
“The concept is that they need experience in the economy to move away from a fossil income to a non-fossil company. When you want to experience the economy, you can't do it since the human touch has been there all the time and all the processes. What we have seen more and more is that there is such a notion of automation as possible. A new concept called invisible operations is going up,” he said.
Invisible operation is the concept of using less human interaction and more and more ability to use modern technology so that your experience with the service is much better, since human experience can lead to errors.
“This is the only country in the world that has an AI minister and talks about the happiness index. The UAE has realized that if they want to continue their economic growth, they need to have very strong foundations and that is where we see the adoption of new technologies to be higher,” he said.
However, he stated that the hype around AI has always been there a few decades ago, but the only difference is that it has become “much more prominent in our daily lives”.
AI must become a commodity
“In the next year or two, I believe that AI will become a commodity as it affects every aspect of our lives. In the workplace, this trend will become much more visible. Digital assistants and chatbots are about to become the norm. If I can do everything in voice I'm the type? Our changes in driving behavior are all around us,” Mishra said.
The study found that in the UAE, more men (76%) than women (64%) have turned to AI over their supervisors and men (61%) have a more positive view of AI at work than women (55%).
“AI is about changing the relationship between people and technology at work and changing the role HR teams and managers have to play in attracting, retaining and developing talent. As a result, the traditional role of the HR team and manager is changing,” he said.
The study found that workers in the UAE, China and India have adopted AI twice as much as those in France and Japan and AI is becoming more prominent with 50% of workers currently using some form of AI at work compared to only 32% in the past. year.
In addition, workers in India (60%) and China (56%) are the most excited about AI, followed by the UAE (44%), Singapore (41%), Brazil (32%), Australia/New Zealand (26%), Japan (25%), USA (22%), UK (20%) and France (8%).
“AI is about using a script and a project is a journey and it gets better over time by reading and analyzing data. The impact of AI at work is only just beginning and organizations need to focus on simplifying and enabling AI at work or risk being left behind,” he said.
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