The wealth creation conversation we need to have about AI: Edward Humphrey
We have an AI crisis, I agree. But it isn’t the one you might think. Yes, the UK has a staggering unemployment problem.
Yes, AI is being cited as the reason jobs are disappearing, particularly at entry level. And given what it costs to run a business right now, perhaps sometimes cutting roles is the only way an organisation can survive.
But I also believe AI is being used as a get-out. It is an outside force that is easy to blame for decisions made in the boardroom.
Most organisations have a choice about how they use AI. Every leader decides how to reinvest the productivity it saves, just as they decide what their business stands for – how it conducts itself, how it develops its people, how it treats its staff.
So where AI is ‘cutting jobs’, I must ask, is it the cause, or the scapegoat? How culturally authentic was that business before AI came to town? How operationally robust?
Instead of defaulting to the easy narrative that ‘AI is going to take our jobs’, what if we worked together, a little harder, towards: ‘AI is making colleagues healthier’?
What if leaders channeled the mission, vision and values published on their website and asked, ‘How can AI help us live up to what we stand for, despite everything we’re facing?’ What if, instead of jumping on the bandwagon, we used AI to make us better?
A pipe dream? A sales ploy? Consider these real projects I’ve been involved in lately.
An unwell employee sends a single WhatsApp message to say they won’t be in. Behind the scenes, AI follows a 14-step compliance process, notifies everyone who needs to know, arranges cover and cancels meetings so nobody’s time is wasted. Ten seconds later, the employee is back to recovering.
A UK healthcare business was losing £237,000 to absence. Its people were swamped with information, drowning in data and repeatedly burning out. A £10,000 intelligent chatbot became their personal assistant and helped them regain balance. Balance that means they spend their evenings with their family, not working.
AI can drive wealth creation for British businesses. It does not have to come at the cost of human capital deprivation.
Ultimately, leaders face a choice. AI will improve productivity, but it is what you do with those reclaimed hours that counts. Compound the savings and make redundancies to drive short-term financial improvements, but reports suggest that 52 per cent of organisations which go down this route, regret it. Or, re-invest now in your company’s future – in better processes, in technology and, crucially, in people.
That won’t deliver instant results, and it won’t satisfy every board. But a workforce that can achieve two to three times as much, with better outcomes and better health, is where real growth comes from.
Of course, this is more complex than I’m making it sound, and some sectors face tougher challenges. The craft of the creative industries risks commoditisation as everyone decides they can design their own work, for example. Ironically, the tech sector itself is feeling it too, as AI-native applications challenge SaaS products that have dominated for years.
But as leaders, we do have a choice. A choice over how we use AI, how it affects our people, and which narrative we choose to be part of. We can keep blaming AI. Or we can look more closely at the decisions we make as leaders, while it reshapes the way we work.
Edward Humphrey is CEO of CloudWize