Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation mean that technologies will be used to manage many standard activities and improve the productive capacity of skilled workers, says international consultancy KPMG South Africa technology sector leader Frank Rizzo.

Knowledge workers are under pressure to use the influx of structured and unstructured data inside the organisation to continuously learn, innovate and use it to deliver value for the business in an environment where time is still taken up by numerous day-to-day tasks.

“Responding to customer queries, performing administrative functions, conducting research, managing aspects of financial and legal services, as examples, requires time, attention and situational analysis to make decisions and then take action.”

The benefit of AI and automation is that they provide the organisation and the knowledge worker with more time that can be used to perform more mission-critical functions. Many companies will soon be using elements of AI to streamline job functions – and this represents a significant opportunity for employees in the digital world, he emphasises.

“Using AI to automate certain job functions enables the organisation to focus on empowering employees with additional skills and knowledge so that it can benefit from the digital economy.”

By reducing the number of menial tasks, the organisation will be able to create new job functions – such as for data scientists – that are designed to harness the potential of a connected society, highlights Rizzo.

AI and cognitive computing systems can predict, infer and, in some ways, think and learn by experience much as humans do. This automation enables companies to enhance their workers’ skills, qualifying them for more strategic and innovative job functions inside the organisation.

However, this change to how people work and live will occur incrementally. The focus of efforts around using AI in commercial applications will be on reinventing and using technologies in new and different ways to be more efficient and cost conscious.

“We can do very little to stop how technology evolves and how AI will become more intelligent and intuitive. However, companies will find ways in which employees will work in collaboration with AI and automation to capitalise on all available resources,” he says.