From: redpointai
The advent of AI is poised to fundamentally reshape the workforce, making current work methods seem “ridiculous” in retrospect, akin to looking back at early 1990s paper filing or dictation practices [00:01:00]. This transformative AI and the future of work isn’t just about incremental changes; it’s about a complete shift in how work is performed [00:01:37].
Shifting Traditional Roles
AI’s integration into business operations is already blurring traditional job functions [00:03:00]. A prime example is the transformation of customer service roles:
- Customer Service to Sales Salesforce’s Service GPT allowed Gucci’s service team to reduce average handle time [00:03:15]. More significantly, AI augmented representatives in real-time, enabling them to become salespeople and brand storytellers [00:03:24]. This completely redefined the traditional role of a service representative, turning a previous cost center into a revenue generator with double-digit conversion rate increases [00:04:12].
- Focus on Human Strengths AI excels at time-consuming, undesirable tasks like service reply recommendations and case summaries [00:02:10]. This allows human customer service representatives to focus on what they are good at, leading to feelings of empowerment and career enrichment [00:02:40].
Augmentation vs. Displacement
The conversation around Impact of AI on job displacement often centers on job replacement, but the focus for many, including Salesforce, is on augmentation [00:04:30].
- Empowering Users AI aims to empower users by handling undesirable aspects of their jobs [00:11:13]. The choice of the term “co-pilot” instead of “autopilot” emphasizes AI as a collaborative coworker, not a replacement [00:11:51].
- Addressing Fear Through ethnographic research, companies like Salesforce engage directly with users to understand their concerns about AI and build user experiences that clearly communicate AI’s role in empowerment [00:10:49].
New Workflows and Departments
The shift from deterministic to stochastic AI models requires a new way of operating, thinking, and building [00:10:14].
- Internal Adoption Salesforce itself utilizes generative AI internally, for example, in V2Mom (Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures) planning in Slack to help brainstorm initiatives and summarize methods [00:32:26].
- Ubiquitous AI Every department will likely need to “rewrite their job description” to integrate AI [00:32:01]. This means leaders will need to teach and set expectations for using AI, similar to how people learned to use the internet and email in the 1990s [00:32:09].
- Team + AI Collaboration The future of work will involve “team plus AI” collaboration, especially in platforms like Slack. This could include group coding with AI, where an LLM is tagged for code suggestions, or AI chiming in during sales account discussions to offer strategies [00:34:00]. This marks a shift from single-player AI interactions to a “multiplayer world” where humans and AI work together [00:45:50].
Specific AI Applications Transforming Work
Current “killer use cases” for generative AI in the enterprise include:
- Chatting with documents [00:31:40]
- Customer support [00:31:41]
- Code generation [00:31:46]
AI’s utility extends beyond answering questions to workflow orchestration. For instance, a co-pilot can be empowered to initiate returns and send shipping labels to customers via email, automating tasks based on predefined workflows [00:36:27].
Healthcare Example
In healthcare, AI is transforming clinical processes by listening to doctor-patient visits and summarizing notes into the required format for electronic health records [00:46:38]. This technology, which also provides patients with understandable summaries, saves doctors “pajama time” spent on administrative tasks, preventing burnout and allowing them to focus on patient care [00:47:01]. This is an example of AI handling “unstructured voice and conversations and then turning that into structured data” [00:47:53].