Realizing the full potential of AI in the workplace

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the signature issues of our time, but also one of the most easily misinterpreted. The prominent computer scientist Andrew Ng's slogan "AI is the new electricity"2 signals that AI is likely to be an economic blockbuster--a general-purpose technology3 with the potential to reshape business and societal landscapes alike. Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don't think AI will transform in the next several years.4 Such provocative statements naturally prompt the question: How will AI technologies change the role of humans in the workplaces of the future? An implicit assumption shaping many discussions of this topic might be called the "substitution" view: namely, that AI and other technologies will perform a continually expanding set of tasks better and more cheaply than humans, while humans will remain employed to perform those tasks at which machines ...