How really cheap AI will change business

New jobs created by affordable AI-plus

In every era of technological upheaval, the longer-term impacts of a technology shift are impossible to predict. No one could have imagined that the smartphone would swallow so many other devices - radios, cameras, tape recorders, turn-by-turn GPS systems, video recorders, calculators, flashlights and more. This disruption was made possible by inexpensive, powerful processors connected to ever-accelerating networks. With AI, we don't yet know the form factor or the ultimate areas of disruption.

Some are beginning to emerge. Some we can speculate on. However, a pattern is clearly developing. Cognitive tasks that tax human capabilities, like analyzing large volumes of data, running the same job over and over, or carefully checking the configuration files of numerous computers, are the lowest-hanging fruit. Note that we are talking about AI replacing tasks and augmenting humans.

If history is a guide, this will create more demand for higher-value work thanks to efficiencies created by AI. After all, spreadsheets replaced rooms of human "calculators," but the category of finance jobs grew stronger after software automated basic calculations. Likewise, even as prominent venture capitalists promised that AI would kill job sets such as junior attorneys and radiologists, we see few signs of mass unemployment in those professions. Rather, workers in those roles that use AI are seeing improvements in their capabilities, with the greatest improvements going to more junior workers.

AI will also flow into the places where cognitive labor is short, or bottlenecks exist. With primary doctors in short supply, AI-enabled diagnostics and decision support systems are improving the capabilities of nurse practitioners, who are often the first line of treatment in many doctor offices. AI can be expected to improve these workers' lives and enable the creation of many more of these relatively high-paying jobs.

This is the new era of "AI+ jobs." Just as search generated entire new industries around SEO, blogging and content curation, AI will likely spawn new industries around helping people and companies get the most out of AI. As the cost of AI continues to fall, the innovations that amaze us today will be considered standard in just a few short years - and this shift will make us all more productive.