Artificial Intelligence in Global Business Environment

This study explores the impact of Artificial Intelligence on workplace productivity, creativity, and cost reduction in the global business environment. It discusses the benefits and challenges of AI implementation in businesses, including the need for restructuring organizational makeup, transforming HR departments, developing new training models, and re-evaluating recruitment practices. The study also highlights the potential of AI to reduce operational costs, increase efficiency, grow revenue, and improve customer experience.

HC3031
Trends in Global Business Environment
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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................................3
Overview of the topic............................................................................................................................3
Theme/ question 1................................................................................................................................3
Theme/question 2.................................................................................................................................4
Theme/question 3.................................................................................................................................5
Theme/question 4.................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................6
References................................................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
Artificial Intelligence has entered into everyone’s lives much swiftly than comprehended and
analysed by anyone. This next generation intelligence has slowly become a part of the lives of
people and even more in businesses. While thinking back of industrial revolution it can be
realized that technology available during this period of time has reframed how products were
made completely, and in turn, how the way people worked and lived. A world before
industrialization is hard to believe however, the reality is before this time minimal change was
there within the economy workings, movement of classes, or technological developments.
With the advent of industrial revolution, there was a rapid boom in technology. Artificial
Intelligence can be perceived as the next great revolution in technology further by definition
bringing a change in how information is collected, stored and used. Similar to any other
revolution, the processes which came before it is made obsolete. Artificial Intelligence has
fast become an important part of people’s daily life changing a wide area of everyday
services. It not only has reduced human effort, but also many industries are making use of AI
for developing machines performing multiple activities. Usage of AI has significantly
contributed in speeding with the working process and producing précised outcomes. The
arrival of AI has brought along the idea of a world free from errors. It is slowly being
introduced across all industries for reducing human efforts. AI is the central percept of the
disruptive changes of the prevailing industrial revolution, likely in challenging the ideas of
human and by being transformative in comparison to industrial revolutions that the mankind
has witnessed yet. Understanding trends in the global business environment is the purpose of
this study.
Overview of the topic
Artificial intelligence just like electricity is expected of brining a transformation across all
industries, right from manufacturing, agriculture, energy, to logistics, or education generating
$13 trillion of GDP growth by 2030. The arrival of AI has provided opportunities to
entrepreneurs in differentiating and defending their businesses. However, it is quite a
challenge to implement company-wide AI strategy. To seek success starting from a pilot
project is advisable for gaining momentum and gain primary comprehension. The purpose
behind pilot projects is creating value and with its successful implementation convincing
stakeholders to make investments in up the AI capabilities of a company.
Theme/ question 1
Will Artificial intelligence be replacing every human job in the workplace?
According to Aleksander (2017), when talking about the impact of AI on human jobs, the fear
prevails in everyone with growing dependency of this technological revolution across both IT
and non-IT sectors. A recent reveals that 72% of people have expressed concerns compared
to only 28% of people showing eagerness about a future where many jobs will be performed
by robots and computers. However, experts do believe that tasks will get replaced, but not
jobs. They further emphasize that rather than being pessimistic about job losses,
organizational leaders should help lessening the jobs where boring tasks are taken over by AI
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whilst more time is spend by humans of higher-level tasks. People scared of AI fail in
understanding that people cannot be replaced by even AI-enabled machines since the
context cannot be comprehended by them nor can they coordinate with people and processes
based on their understanding of that context. According to Plastino and Purdy (2018), things
like interrelation dynamics, personality, organizational culture, attitudes and preferences,
politics, moods, strategic visions, body language etc. can be comprehended only by humans.
For example, in a manufacturing unit compared to repetitive welding, an understanding of
context is required for complicated repairs done by plumbers and oil rig workers. AI cannot
handle such tasks.
Theme/question 2
How AI will be improving workplace productivity?
According to Watson (2018), workplace is witnessing change rapidly with the evolution of
artificial intelligence, which was perceived as a game-changing technology two years ago by
7% of top-performing companies. This figured increased to 40% in a year. It is reported that
by 2021, AI will be recovering 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity. AI is used in enabling
individual knowledge workers, enhancing their productivity and feeding them timely
information to forward the objectives of businesses. Regardless of fears about job
redundancies and shift in organizations priorities researches suggest that beyond inhibiting
hindering employees or even obsolete certain jobs, significant contributions are made by AI in
helping employees to quickly and more effectively attaining the business objectives.
According to Brougham and Haar (2018), for doing this organizations should make
investments in different types of AI. A recent survey conducted for better understanding the
benefits of AI on workplace productivity reveals that 80% of respondents agreed that their
organizations needed to master the art collaborating humans and machines. They further
highlighted that a critical role will be played by AI enabled applications in the productivity and
performance employees. Utilization of AI will streamline processes, empower the employees
to get involved into activities that are more creative, instinctive and needs thinking.
Theme/question 3
Does AI Enhance workplace creativity?
According to Agrawal, Gans and Goldfarb (2017), the worldliness of AI has given rise to a
healthy debate focusing on creativity between human versus machine. Working with a
machine can help in reducing the employees’ workloads further allowing them in spending
more time in strategic and creative thinking. However, AI is much more than just a time saver.
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Valuable support is provided by AI right from giving data insight to enabling marketers in
better comprehending their customers to conceive and repeat iterating basic ideas for aiding
the creative process. AI is fast emerging as an indispensable key resource that helps
businesses in improving workplace creativity. Indeed some great examples created from the
collaboration of man and machine can be seen in our surroundings. According to Bolton, et
al., (2018), The & Partnership London for building an AI platform for writing the next Lexus
advertising script turned to tech company Visual Voice, with visual recognition support from
IBM Watson. AI was trained with Cannes Lions-winning car and luxury advertising for
identifying the trends related with the celebrated advertising and was taught in being
instinctive. The proliferation of AI and employees will virtually alter every job, with the later
interacting and often depending on their machine teammates for doing their job. The impact of
AI can be seen on the democratization of sophisticated visuals. Techniques like style
transfers and other machine-learning-trained methods are applied for generating that for a
skilled professional would have been a time-consuming process. Its influence can also be
seen in providing assistance to the professionals’ creativity. AI can be used for liberating the
creative of dull work, complicated execution and organizational tasks further allowing them in
investing on more time on their creativeness.
Theme/question 4
Can AI reduce organizations costs and increase revenue?
According to Plastino and Purdy (2018), for staying ahead of competitors and realizing
ongoing success, organizations are continuously finding ways for reducing their operating
costs. The ideal solution is provided by AI eventually leading to increased revenues. AI helps
organizations in lessening the need of outsourcing work, which once was seen as a cost-
effective method while still producing high-level outcomes. Instead of paying outside workers,
all tasks can be moved back in-house. AI can cut business process costs on an average by
25% to 40%. In IT domain, AI can save 40-55% of costs by multiple software robots taking the
place of a full-time employee. Rather than just cutting down costs, AI is also be perceived the
right instrument for increasing revenues. Many organizations have redefined their customer
support with the help of Chatbots and virtual assistants dealing with the smaller concerns of
customers before those are blown up into a bigger problem. According to Keisner, Raffo and
Wunsch-Vincent (2016), SMEs can reduce their labour costs by opting for virtual assistants
and chatbots. With AI minimizing human touch, the chances of errors in insight received after
processing has reduced further resulting into lesser time spent of elimination of the
repercussions. Moreover, few hours of human labour eventually results into lower operational
costs for companies and increased revenues.
Conclusion
From the above study it can be concluded that although artificial intelligence might still be in
the stage of infancy, but it has already forced global leaders in reconsidering some of their
core structures. Technological advancement has made it compulsory for businesses in
restructuring their organizational makeup, transforming their HR departments, developing new
training models, and re-evaluating their recruitment practices. Much of these changes have
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resulted from the early penetration of AI alongside the preparedness for the organizational
needs that will be emerging as they mature. More and more businesses are taking up artificial
intelligence for reducing their operational costs, increasing efficiency, growing revenue and
improving customer experience. For higher benefits businesses must adopt the entire range
of smart technologies that includes machine learning, natural language processing and more
in their processes and products. Even smaller businesses that are new to AI can gain
significant benefits by incorporating this technology in their workplaces.
References
Agrawal, A. K., Gans, J. S. and Goldfarb, A. (2017). What to expect from artificial
intelligence. MIT Sloan Management Review,[Online] 58(3), 23-27. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1885859665?accountid=30552 Accessed on 28/4/2019
Aleksander, I. (2017). Partners of humans: A realistic assessment of the role of robots in the
foreseeable future. Journal of Information Technology, [Online]32(1), 1-9. Available:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41265-016-0032-4 Accessed on 28/4/2019
Bolton, C., Machová, V., Kovacova, M. and Valaskova, K. (2018). The power of human-
machine collaboration: Artificial intelligence, business automation and the smart economy.
Economics, Management and Financial Markets,[Online] 13(4), 51. Available:
http://dx.doi.org/10.22381/EMFM13420184 Accessed on 28/4/2019
Brougham, D. and Haar, J. (2018). Smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and
algorithms (STARA): Employees' perceptions of our future workplace. Journal of Management
and Organization,[Online] 24(2), 239-257. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2016.55
Accessed on 28/4/2019
Keisner, A., Raffo, J. and Wunsch-Vincent, S. (2016). Robotics: Breakthrough technologies,
innovation, intellectual property. Foresight and STI Governance, [Online]10(2), 7-27.
Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/1995-459X.2016.2.7.27 Accessed on 28/4/2019
Plastino, E. and Purdy, M. (2018). Game changing value from artificial intelligence: Eight
strategies. Strategy & Leadership, [Online]46(1), 16-22. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/2001043256?accountid=30552 Accessed on 28/4/2019
Plastino, E. and Purdy, M. (2018). Game changing value from artificial intelligence: Eight
strategies. Strategy & Leadership, [Online]46(1), 16-22. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/2001043256?accountid=30552 Accessed on 28/4/2019
Watson, T., M.P. (2018). THE FUTURE OF WORK: Improving the quality of work. Renewal: A
Journal of Labour Politics, [Online]26(1), 10-17. Available:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/2031700760?accountid=30552 Accessed on 28/4/2019
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