Maya Kulycky loves a bulleted list, but even more, she loves handing over the drudgery to a digital assistant. “I really like the drafting tool,” she says of Gemini in Google Docs, the AI function embedded across several apps in Google Workspace. She starts with a rough draft of a memo—“Here’s what we had a conversation around, here’s what we want to do, here are the next steps we’re going to take, here’s the timeline”—and then asks Gemini to arrange those thoughts into a well-formatted email to her team at Google Research. “The technology is with me,” she says. “It’s not a replacement for me. It’s an accelerant.” 
AI in the Workplace
As AI arrives at our workplaces, it’s showing up as a helpful tool, not as a superintelligence. The signs are clear that AI will affect every sector of the workforce, from entry-level employees to managers and CEOs. The deployment of AI is both a design and a user-interface problem and a wider, societal responsibility of technologists, AI companies, and government and legislators. The next few years are critical. We need to lay a proper foundation for AI at work.
In her role as vice president for strategy, operations, and outreach, Kulycky is tasked with aligning the teams that push significant AI innovations forward. Kulycky believes we need to proceed carefully to ensure that AI augments human potential. One of the near-term goals is exploring how AI can assist with the many background tasks and organizational work that often bog down teams, the so-called day-to-day that can get in the way. If these commitments could be offloaded onto AI agents, workers would have more time for the most important and creative challenges they face. 
Adopting AI Responsibly
The future that AI creates will also depend upon how exactly we integrate it. Take the example of introducing customer-service agents that are entirely AI-based. A company can choose to provide better, more thoughtful care to customers (with the AI assisting humans), or the company could cut jobs. The economist Erik Brynjolfsson studies how the workforce will be affected by AI. When asked about the specter of workers being replaced by AI, Brynjolfsson brought up the Luddites, the famous reactionary group. Concerned that looms and automatic weaving machines would replace skilled artisans, knitters broke into factories to tear down the machinery that was automating away their jobs.
According to a working paper from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), AI will likely enhance rather than replace jobs that have a lot of in-person interaction, critical decision-making, and specialized expertise. Occupations such as lawyers, surgeons, or judges will benefit both from AI’s ability to take on routine administrative tasks and from its assistance in core functions such as analyzing medical scans or writing a first draft of a patent submission.
Impact of AI on the Workforce
Each week, it seems, we receive news of bigger and more powerful large language models (LLMs), and that leads the public imagination to a place where AI tools are so sophisticated that they severely pressure huge segments of the workforce. Brynjolfsson offered a note of optimism. While the capabilities of machine learning are certainly remarkable, he cautioned against presuming that machines will fully automate modern employment processes.
Brynjolfsson and his colleagues ran a now-famous study for which they observed the implementation of an LLM in a call center. The AI examined the calls completed by the most effective employees, then surfaced those practices to everyone else in the work group. The least-skilled workers benefited the most from AI; their performance jumped by 35 percent. AI’s ability to close the gap between high and low performers could also streamline onboarding, acclimating workers quickly to new roles.
Business Adoption of AI
Though the research by scholars and analysts points to the productivity gains that can result from the assistance of AI, businesses’ uptake has been slow. Brynjolfsson expressed surprise about how the adoption of artificial intelligence is already lagging behind the technology’s capabilities: “I’m disappointed by how few people have thought about how to use generative AI (GenAI) in their daily work. While the technology is racing ahead very rapidly, there’s much less energy put into how we get business value out of it.”
At the current rate of adoption, experts predict that AI will eclipse certain sectors of labor while creating opportunities for new kinds of jobs. Goldman Sachs estimates that GenAI may automate close to a quarter of all jobs. A 2023 McKinsey report predicts that 30 percent of today’s work hours could be replaced by GenAI as soon as 2030.
Social and Economic Implications
That poses both economic and social concern since low-wage jobs are disproportionately held by women, people of color, and workers who haven’t received higher education. Anyone affected by such an industry shift will have the added burden of needing to learn new skills to transition to a new role successfully. AI can assist with that training, given how quickly it can do the work of, say, personalizing learning programs and translating content.
Perhaps the simplest concern about the economic impact of AI at work is who will benefit financially from these large shifts. Disruptive technologies—even those that eliminate jobs—historically raise national income because they boost overall productivity. But the workers affected by that shift don’t necessarily see that economic benefit. Companies will need to work together, along with governments and nonprofits, to help more people realize the economic potential of AI.
Conclusion
In places like parts of Europe and Asia where the working-age population is falling, AI can complement the workforce, taking on tasks that allow workers to focus on the most important, rewarding aspects of jobs. Countries can also choose to apply AI in their own ways.
Who is responsible for rallying industry around an economy-preserving, assistive approach to AI? Brynjolfsson recommends that entrepreneurs and executives focus on the top line as well as the bottom, broadening their performance goals to look not just at costs but also at metrics such as quality and customer satisfaction. Organizations will get more buy-in from their customers and their workforce if they use AI to complement workers.
