Perhaps this dropped below the radar, but back in 2017, AlphaZero, a computer program developed by artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind (which was purchased by Google in 2014) taught itself how to play chess in just under 4 hours and then proceeded to defeat the world's best (previously) computer chess program Stockfish. In a mind-boggling 1,000 game match, AlphaZero won 155 games, lost 6 games, and played the remaining 839 games to a draw. What's impressive about the feat is not that AlphaZero won 155 out of 1,000 games (which doesn't seem like an impressive win/loss percentage), but rather the AI program taught itself how to play the game on its own (check out the video on how it all happened). Former world champion chess player and grandmaster Gary Kasparov, who famously played against IBM's computer chess program DeepBlue in the late 1990's (winning one match but losing the rematch) said, "It’s a remarkable achievement...We have always assumed that chess required too much empirical knowledge for a machine to play so well from scratch, with no human knowledge added at all."
Just a few years ago, back in September, 2023, an AI-controlled DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) fighter jet, the X-62 Variable In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA), defeated a human pilot flying an Air Force F-16 in a series of dogfights at Edwards Air Force base 5-0. When I first read about AlphaZero and the X-62 VISTA in two books co-written by Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt (The Age of AI: And Our Human Future and Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit, which appeared on my 2025 Leadership Reverie Reading List), I guess I was surprised at just how far AI has come.
You may forgive my ignorance and naivete when I point out that I am old enough to remember a world before color television, cable TV, calculators, personal computers, and cell phones. I will also admit that when it comes to technology, I am a bit of a laggard on the adoption curve. Unfortunately, I no longer have the luxury to be a laggard. Technology is advancing rapidly, and those who ignore the advances in AI, in particular, will be left behind. As the saying goes (which was also the title of a Harvard Business Review article), AI may not replace all humans, but humans who use AI will replace humans who do not. Or is that even true anymore?
The Wall Street Journal published an article on July 3, 2025 with the headline, "CEOs start saying the quiet part out loud: AI will wipe out jobs". As Chip Cutter and Haley Zimmerman write, "CEOs are no longer dodging the question of whether AI takes jobs. Now they are giving predictions of how deep those cuts could go." Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor, said, "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S." Farley told author Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival that "AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind."
Cutter and Zimmerman go on to write, "Corporate advisers say executives' views on AI are changing almost weekly as leaders gain a better sense of what the technology can do..." There are still those who say that the fears of AI replacing so many jobs are overblown. Pascal Deroches, chief financial officer at AT&T said, "It's hard to say unequivocally 'Oh, we're going to have less employees who are going to be more productive.' We just don't know."
Forbes magazine also reported on Farley's comments ("CEO said you're replaceable: Prepare for the white-collar gig economy"). Steven Wolfe Pereira, who wrote the article for Forbes, emphasized that CEOs are no longer saying that AI will replace jobs and new jobs will emerge. They are simply stating that AI will replace jobs. Period. He writes, "Here's what your CEO sees that you don't: A junior analyst costs $85,000 plus benefits, PTO, and office space. A gig analyst with AI tools costs $500 per project, no strings attached. One requires management, training, and retention effort. The other delivers results and disappears."
Pereira goes on to write that the transformation is already here, citing statistics from McKinsey that suggest that 36% of those responding to the American Opportunity Survey, equivalent to 58 million Americans) identify as independent workers. The gig economy is growing three times as fast as the rest of the U.S. workforce, and AI will only accelerate this trend. We are in what Pereira calls the first phase, when companies freeze hiring for any jobs that AI can at least partially do. Phase two (next 6 months) will occur when companies undergo mass restructuring with elimination of entire departments. Phase 3 (the next 18 months) will complete the transformation to a full gig economy. The fourth and final phase (the next 3 years) will occur when the surviving companies have 20% of their previous full-time head count and 500% more gig relationships. At this point, companies will have transformed from a hierarchical organizational structure to a hub-and-spoke model, with the hub being the permanent workers and the spokes being the gig workers.
I know that AI will be one of the important drivers of cost-reduction and improved efficiencies for health care organizations. Not a day goes by when AI becomes a topic of conversation in my organization. Whether the job cuts are as deep as some executives fear is an important question, and one that I don't pretend to know the answer. I don't necessarily agree with Stephen Hawking, who said, "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." Nor do I fully agree with Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, who said, "AI is likely to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity." Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Rest assured, I will be reading (and posting) on this topic in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment