Nine in ten employees (87%) recognise that AI has a positive role to play in helping them stay productive, while eight in ten (81%) prefer a blend of AI and human interaction, according to Lenovo.
The new global study reveals that the majority of 12,000 employees surveyed (91%) believe they would be more productive when their IT issues at work are resolved quickly and effectively. Another 74% say poor IT support has decreased their motivation at work. Results show an efficient and effective IT support system needs to be in place to power today’s hybrid workforce.
Survey respondents see the key benefits of AI-powered IT being issue resolution with minimum disruption where AI can identify and resolve IT-related issues automatically, and in enabling 24/7 support even during weekends and holidays.
“As workplaces have evolved with the rise of hybrid work, IT support for employees clearly hasn’t kept pace. With the growing adoption of cloud services, digital intelligence and the Metaverse, organisations’ IT environments are only going to become more complex, so effective IT support will become even more essential to employee experience and morale,” said John Stamer, Vice President and General Manager, Global Product Services at Lenovo.
Since its launch in November last year, the artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, has had a massive impact. Already, some schools have banned it as students quickly employed the bot to take shortcuts in their schoolwork, while debates rage on whether the bot will or won’t replace copywriters. It can also write code – so well, in fact, that when Google fed it a series of coding interview questions, its answers would have qualified it for an entry-level engineering position with annual compensation of US$183,000.
But Saša Slankamenac, Architect at Dariel Software, doesn’t agree with the fears that AI will replace software developers. “In my view, AI is not coming for anyone’s job. These concerns crop up with every major new technology that’s released, and while these technologies may change and shape the world we live in, it doesn’t completely replace it.”
Exactly what these changes will be and when they’ll take place is not quite clear at this point, he said. “ChatGPT is now roughly where Google was in 1999 – most people vaguely understood there was this thing called the Internet and that it had value, but it wasn’t widely adopted and commercialised yet. Right now, people are still trying different experiments to test AI technology like ChatGPT’s commercial value. Something will undoubtedly emerge that drives widespread adoption, but it hasn’t quite reached that stage yet.”
Still, he says, it’s much more likely to enhance human jobs and industries than to destroy it. “AI is a generalist, not a specialist. It can only do what it’s been taught to do by a human. So, wherever AI is applied to meet the needs of a specific enterprise, a human will have to ‘train’ it to do the job. Problems are not generic, they’re bespoke.”
Emad Haffar, Head Of Technical Experts, META region, Kaspersky:
Artificial Intelligence is transforming the workplace as we know it by streamlining tasks and augmenting human capabilities. AI chatbots manage customer support queries, Machine Learning algorithms improve data analysis, companies gain better insights into customer preferences and predictive models improve decision-making. And, while it may be less visible, AI improves workplace cybersecurity as well.
AI cybersecurity, with the support of Machine Learning, is set to be a powerful tool in the near future. As with some industries, human interaction has long been essential and irreplaceable in security. While cybersecurity currently relies heavily on human input, technology is steadily becoming better at specific tasks than we are. First and foremost, AI can eliminate human error in configuration, a significant cause of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. It also has the capacity to boost human efficiency with repeated activities, which is another pain point.
Furthermore, incorporating AI into cybersecurity efforts can enable IT teams to handle a large number of threat alerts in an effective and practical manner. Threat response can also gain an advantage; while human response can lag behind the initial attack, AI-assisted cybersecurity can provide cybersecurity teams with simplified reports to make processing and decision-making easier. New threat identification and prediction serve as another factor that impacts response timeframes for cyberattacks. Programming based on AI and Machine Learning can help highlight similarities between the new threat and previously identified threats, making it simpler to detect an assault. This is something that humans cannot effectively accomplish in a timely manner, emphasising the importance of adaptive security models.
In a true execution of AI, actual independent decisions are being made. However, this kind of self-directed system does not yet exist. Instead, today’s AI systems either assist or augment security services. The ideal role of AI in cybersecurity is the interpretation of the patterns established by Machine Learning algorithms. Work is being done to help develop this field in pursuit of human-like frameworks, but true AI is a long-term goal that requires machines to take ideas and rethink them across circumstances. To put it another way, this degree of creativity and critical thinking is not as near as the AI rumours would like us to believe.
Loubna Imenchal, Head of Enterprise Business, Logitech AMECA:
As AI technology becomes more sophisticated, it is becoming increasingly integrated into the workplace, providing businesses with new and innovative ways to operate and compete in today’s challenging environment. When it comes to remote collaboration and, more specifically, video conferencing, AI is already making a mark for a variety of reasons.
Video bridges the gap between voice-only phone calls and in-person meetings, which is essential to building business relationships. With more remote employees and cross border collaboration, a lot of meetings are taking place online or in a hybrid format. However, in this hybrid work setting, a combination of in-office and remote workers makes it more difficult to provide equitable experiences to everyone. AI can assist in solving the disparity between hybrid teams by giving remote workers an ‘at the table’ experience when meeting with in-office colleagues.
A webcam or conference camera with just excellent audio and quality video is no longer considered adequate. AI camera control technologies can now autonomously move the lens and adjust the zoom to create more immersive meeting experiences, ensuring that no one is left out of the picture. Additionally, AI can manage room lighting like an expert; by reducing the video noise, optimising the white balance and fine-tuning the colour and saturation, everyone can look their best on camera. In a similar way, AI-powered audio processing technologies deliver enterprise-class sound to video conferences. AI can precisely distinguish undesirable noise from human speech, reduce unwanted noises such as fans and keyboard clicks, and focus on the active speaker to convey their every word with remarkable clarity.
When you combine AI with multiple cameras, video conferencing is elevated to the next level. Imagine an AI director who can automatically choose the best available angle to bring remote participants off the sidelines and into the room. This advancement will undoubtedly have a significant effect. Indeed, we are certain that AI-powered, equitable meetings will become the new standard for video meetings. Your meetings will appear so 2020 if you don’t have multiple cameras and smart AI to find the best angle and camera shot.
Christoph Börner, Senior Director of Digital, Cyara:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic right now and companies are talking about it everywhere, from the board room all the way to the contact centre. AI has been implemented in chatbots, robotic process automation, virtual agents and many other technologies for sales and customer service. And with AI becoming more widely used by businesses than ever, conversational AI has started to play a larger role in contact centre strategies. The global conversational AI market is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate of roughly 22% between 2020 and 2025 because of the advantages of this technology.
Increasing the use of AI frees up resources instead of needing to hire more people to boost productivity like a traditional call centre, which increases costs. In addition, AI enables agents to concentrate on more complex inquiries, retain customer interest and streamline operational efficiency. Although conversational AI is still in its early phases, it effectively understands customer demands and responds in a natural way.
Personalisation is another area where AI is having a significant impact. For instance, the best AI-powered chatbots and voice bots can offer products, services and overall customer experiences that are tailored to the specific user. They’re also becoming more skilled at understanding and responding appropriately to a wide variety of different languages, accents and dialects. Furthermore, chatbots are more skilled at understanding all possible variations of how a customer could phrase a question or request. This is especially beneficial for customer service representatives who might receive dozens of emails per day from customers who are confused about product details or are just looking for help. These enquiries can now be automated with a chatbot, simplifying the process for the customer service team to identify and solve customer issues.
There are also AI-driven tools that can analyse customer data to assist businesses in better understanding and serving their customers like never before. This goes far beyond typical metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) to understand how customers truly feel about a business and what they want to gain from it in the long run. With AI, businesses can identify strained customer relationships by analysing customer behaviour patterns and giving businesses the opportunity to repair the relationship before it’s too late.
Refat Al-Karmi, Senior Consultant, META at Juniper Networks:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is establishing a firm foothold in our world. People use it more and more as consumers, both knowingly (for example, when interacting with personal assistant on smartphones) and unknowingly, when shopping using Buy Now, Pay Later short-term financing. The same holds true for workplaces. AI already has countless applications, ranging from personalised retail offerings and AI digital assistants or chatbots that enhance the customer experience to supply chain optimisation, process automation and improved decision-making.
IT and operations are among the most common areas where organisations are currently utilising AI. As Digital Transformation continues across all industries, businesses may struggle to modernise their network infrastructure. The cloud has profoundly reshaped network traffic flows because application traffic is no longer limited to the enterprise. Legacy networks, which were designed to handle conventional business applications and traffic flows, are simply unable to cope with the dynamic workloads and diverse data flows that characterise today’s enterprise. Meanwhile, security threats are constantly increasing.
Frequently dealing with network issues and spending a significant amount of money to resolve them can cause organisations to lose focus. However, by leveraging the power of AI, along with Machine Learning and data science techniques, businesses can establish next-generation enterprise networks that are predictable, reliable and provide exceptional visibility into operations; this insight can help to drive better business outcomes. AI-driven proactive automation and self-healing capabilities replace time-consuming manual IT tasks (and eradicate human error), lowering networking operational costs and saving significant time and money while boosting IT productivity and delivering the optimal networking experience to every user.
Should AI then be regarded as a panacea? Definitely not. But it is already making a positive difference. While AI may present challenges for organisations looking to reap its benefits, companies that have adopted and harnessed the technology typically see real and meaningful outcomes. The adoption of AI in the networking space continues to accelerate, with an emphasis on enhancing user experience, predictive insights and security. In addition to IT and Operations, functions such as Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain and Research & Development all have the potential to derive significant business benefits from AI implementation.
Nidal Azba, CTO, Director of Global Practices and Delivery, Kyndryl Middle East and Africa:
Now, more than ever, it’s important for businesses to create an intelligent, continuously improved digital workplace that empowers employees to collaborate, be productive and enhance business outcomes, while fostering their organisational culture. However, since this new kind of future-proof workplace demands a data-driven approach to seamlessly integrate applications and siloed data, simplify workflows and improve the employee experience, AI is of vital importance.
Businesses that become more data-centric seek to leverage insights derived from corporate and public data sources to improve decision-making and streamline operations throughout the organisation. In most cases, this involves exposing the data to advanced analytics and AI. The right AI solutions can unleash a new level of growth for forward-thinking organisations, whether they want to personalise delightful customer experiences at scale or embed AI into every IT process and drive speed and efficiency.
By offloading routine tasks to AI-enabled tools, companies can drastically reduce expenses while enhancing user experiences. Automation reduces stress on employees and lowers turnover rates. The combination of analytics, automation and AI results in an intelligent support infrastructure that learns with each employee interaction, allowing for improved productivity. For instance, using AI to answer the most common queries without engaging a human agent, benefits both the customer and agent experiences. Endless use cases that can be adapted at workplaces in the human resources function, compliance, speech recognition and data analysis to improve decision-making. Moreover, proactive and predictive support using AI and automation addresses problems before they occur, and when support is required, it can be delivered in an omnichannel way.
Advantages aside, businesses confront significant technological hurdles in executing their data and AI strategies. The complexity of fitting diverse data streams, users, applications, security and compliance requirements within a streamlined data management strategy is daunting. Businesses must seek a partner with a transformative mindset, proven methodology and deep expertise in leading AI and data technologies and business processes in order to maximize value and ensure long-term success.