Artificial intelligence has become so pervasive in today’s business climate that the rarer species is a technology that doesn’t utilize some form of AI.
Indeed, AI itself is no longer a differentiating feature for new and existing applications and technologies, which is now leading organizations to focus their messaging on the user, not on the solution. In other words, how AI in their technology can help improve the way users perform their tasks, interact with others, and basically live their lives.
It’s a subtle shift, but it’s an important one: By focusing on the person, organizations are humanizing and normalizing AI. No longer is it the stuff of science fiction in the form of HAL or Skynet or some other self-aware computer antagonist; it’s now the digital assistant that can automatically turn a newsletter into a podcast or, in the case of video communications, automatically blur a participant’s camera and put them on mute should they need to step away during a meeting.
Moving WFH From WTF
Since the waning days of the pandemic, large and small organizations have advocated a return to the office, noting a need to return to ‘normalcy’ and the benefits of being together, such as increased collaboration and employee engagement, better ideation, and the simple joy of having everyone together during the day. Most employees, however, are pushing back, noting definite advantages to working from home, such as greater focus, shorter (or no) commute, and lower costs (no more buying lunch every day). These benefits are real or perceived, depending on your point of view.
What hasn’t been discussed at length are the advantages that WFH provides from a human perspective: inclusiveness, economic equity, and freedom to make life decisions based on factors wholly unrelated to office location. There is no question of the
AI has the potential to make the WFH-versus-in-office argument moot. The aforementioned smart videoconferencing system (which also automatically brings late-coming participants up to speed when they join a meeting) is a prime illustration; more examples exist, and even better ones are coming, guaranteed.
As AI becomes ever more infused in how we communicate, collaborate, interact, ideate, create, and otherwise do, here’s hoping the noise around remote work is a good thing or a bad thing will cease. Work—from wherever, whenever, and however—will simply be work, no qualifiers needed.
