In the fast-paced world of technology, a new revolutionary force is emerging to transform the digital workplace — artificial intelligence (AI).
One AI technology currently making waves is ChatGPT, as evidenced by a staggering 4,000 percent increase in searches for “ChatGPT-4” on Google Trends within the last 90 days.
This innovative tool holds immense potential for various applications in the workplace, ranging from generating meeting minutes and non-disclosure agreements to offering software development suggestions and acting as a powerful search and reference tool.
Businesses are already capitalising on the capabilities of generative AI. For instance, CarMax, a vehicle seller, recently utilised ChatGPT3 to analyse 100,000 customer reviews and automatically generate 5,000 concise summaries—accomplishing a task that would have taken their human team 11 years.
The excitement surrounding AI’s potential has captured the imagination of global executives, as evidenced by a recent Accenture survey where 96 percent of respondents expressed extreme inspiration from AI foundation models’ new capabilities.
What about the risks?
However, with this boundless potential comes a host of challenges and risks. Data privacy tops the list of concerns, leading Italy to temporarily ban ChatGPT due to these issues. Other worries include safeguarding intellectual property rights, ensuring accuracy and up-to-dateness of information, potential disruptions in critical business processes, and the perennial fear of job displacement.
Digital Workplace Group (DWG), experts in the digital workplace realm, representing clients like The Coca-Cola Group, Adobe, Michelin, and Wells Fargo, offer insights into eight ways generative AI will reshape the digital workplace and impact our working lives:
- Generating Content: Generative AI can significantly streamline content production across digital workplaces, making it easier and faster while optimising elements like findability and readability. Organisations that can effectively blend generative AI with human creativity and expertise will likely achieve the most success.
- New Digital Skills and Roles: Capitalising on the full potential of ChatGPT and similar AI requires new digital skills for end-users, such as constructing effective queries, recognising incorrect information, and navigating potential risks. Organisations may also create specialised roles to leverage generative AI effectively, making digital workplace teams instrumental in fostering digital literacy and specialised knowledge.
- Governance: Effective governance is crucial to balance the benefits of generative AI with mitigating risks like data privacy, intellectual property protection, and unreliable data. Digital workplace teams play a key role in establishing and implementing these policies, building trust among users and stakeholders.
- Digital Workplace Applications: Generative AI services will increasingly integrate into various digital workplace applications, with major vendors like Microsoft investing heavily in AI from OpenAI. Digital workplace teams must support the rollout, governance, and optimal use of these applications, anticipating rapid changes ahead.
- Low-Code No-Code Solutions: Generative AI’s advancement is likely to drive low-code no-code solutions, enabling non-IT professionals to create simple apps, workflows, and automation. However, this may present governance challenges that organisations need to address.
- Findability: Generative AI can transform findability within digital workplaces, acting as sophisticated chatbots and automating tagging and smart summaries to enhance content discoverability.
- Expectations: The potential of ChatGPT and AI in general may raise the expectations of business stakeholders and employees regarding their digital workplace experience, demanding higher standards for interfaces and functionality. Digital workplace teams must navigate the gap between expectations and reality.
- Exponential Change: The digital workplace is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and the rise of generative AI will likely accelerate these changes. Combining generative AI with emerging technologies like the Metaverse presents even more possibilities. Digital workplace teams will face challenges in keeping up with rapid advancements.
Generative AI holds tremendous potential for transforming the digital workplace, but businesses must navigate the risks and challenges effectively. Digital workplace teams play a crucial role in finding the right balance between innovation and governance, driving a potentially thrilling rollercoaster ride of change in the workplace.
Amelia Brand is the Editor for HRreview, and host of the HR in Review podcast series. With a Master’s degree in Legal and Political Theory, her particular interests within HR include employment law, DE&I, and wellbeing within the workplace. Prior to working with HRreview, Amelia was Sub-Editor of a magazine, and Editor of the Environmental Justice Project at University College London, writing and overseeing articles into UCL’s weekly newsletter. Her previous academic work has focused on philosophy, politics and law, with a special focus on how artificial intelligence will feature in the future.