The bots ARE coming for your job after all

Generative AI (GenAI) is coming for the opposite end of the jobs continuum from robotic process automation (RPA). RPA handles rote tasks, freeing teams to be more imaginative and allowing them to apply their creativity to solve the bigger problems businesses face. While this encourages us to rethink work, it does not demand it of us. It only chips away at the cheaper-to-perform tasks in our business processes.

But GenAI is coming for you and how you work. And if it’s coming for you, you’d better rethink how work at the pricier end of the spectrum gets done and find yourself a role in that new reality while you are at it.

RPA lulled knowledge workers into a false sense of security

RPA has lulled us into the assumption that the bots would come for the people on the factory line first, then trades people, and finally, the creative thinkers. But GenAI has reversed this. As one of my former creative colleagues, Jon Williams, CEO of the Liberty Guild, puts it: “Designers, copywriters, and photographers are all in dire positions, and the transcreation agencies are suddenly looking very shaky. This will massively affect how you get your work from your agencies.”

Beyond Agency Land, every rapid iterative process can be accelerated with the ideation capabilities of GenAI, extending to new product development (design thinking), DevOps, and by extension, pretty much every C-suite decision. Essentially, where idea generation or hypothesis development is required or the summarization of a collective brainstorm is important for forging a way ahead, GenAI has you covered.

Exhibit 1: The more your role involves coming up with new ideas, summarizing thoughts, and generating hypotheses, the more GenAI will impact it

Source: HFS Research, 2023

If you can’t rethink how your work should be done, we know a bot that can

I’ll say it again. You need to rethink how work gets done. And if you can’t, I know a ChatGPT that will give it a crack for you.

In fact, I urge anyone sitting comfortably to do a simple experiment. Ask ChatGPT how it thinks GenAI could be used to enhance the way you work. To start, register here.

Taking a swig of my own champagne, here’s the ChatGPT response I got with this very basic prompt: “How could I redesign the way a research analyst works, taking advantage of the capabilities of generative AI?”

For absolute clarity and transparency, ChatGPT generated the left column in Exhibit 2. My commentary is on the right.

Exhibit 2: ChatGPT can even tell us how a research analyst can work smarter

Leaders in software engineering, sales, customer ops, and marketing must act now

Based on the near-term impact on functional spending and pressures on businesses to take out costs, we can start making solid predictions about which roles will be impacted over the next four years and broadly when (Exhibit 3). Software engineering, sales, customer operations, and marketing leaders should act now.

Exhibit 3: Red, amber, and green boxes tell us how urgent the need to redesign roles is from software engineering to strategy

Data sources: *Corporate Industry Service, Oxford Economics, McKinsey
Source: HFS Research, 2023

The Bottom Line: You are no longer exempt from the march of AI. You must use it to redefine your role for better outcomes, or someone else will.

RPA tinkered with the mundane and the rote. GenAI gets at the guts of highly skilled, well-paid knowledge worker jobs. We need not fear GenAI if we are ready to reshape how we work and allow it to support and enhance our creative thinking. While it can’t come up with truly transformative sparks of genius, in most cases, it will help us consider a wider range of options and speed up our delivery.

Further reading:

• The dos and don’ts and potential costs of GenAI
• Generative AI offers personalization and loyalty across the enterprise—if you get it right
• IBM finds CEOs racing ahead of their teams in pursuit of $7 trillion GenAI prize
• Horses for Sources blog posts on generative AI