By Betsy Burton
Join Me Next Week For Aragon Transform Tour Presentation on Digital Labor
I’m very excited to be able to give a presentation next week during Aragon Research’s June Transform Tour 2023, “AI Everywhere—Going ChatGPT.”
We have been talking about digital labor for several years, and in fact have several notes, forecasts and blogs on the topic.
- Five Trends in Digital Labor, 2023
- Are You Overusing Your Digital Labor?
- Digital Labor Is Here – Why You Need to Care About It
- Worldwide Digital Labor 2020-2026 Forecast
- Best Practices For Managing Your Integrated Digital and Human Workforce
Digital Labor refers to the AI-enabled computer applications that are used to perform goal-driven tasks that had previously or could be otherwise performed in part or in full by humans. Digital labor can be supported with stationery, wearable/mobile or self-moving (robotic) hardware.
Digital labor can support context aware interactions, location aware services and visual aware services. This means the spectrum of digital labor can range from AI-enabled assistants for doctors, wearable devices that help manage a person’s mental and physical wellbeing to robots and self-driving vehicles.
Rate of Adoption
Digital labor is important for technology and business leaders to understand. For one thing we believe the adoption and deployment of digital labor will be dramatically faster than most emerging technologies. Just look at the amount of attention that some of the generative AI systems are getting today, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing and Google Bard.
We believe users and business leaders alike are going to adopt this technology as a way to help improve their effectiveness and their efficiency. The challenge is, if users and business leaders adopt this technology very quickly, how will organizations define the metrics, the governance, the usage, and the guardrails and guideposts around this technology?
Not Just Another IT Technology
Another reason why digital labor is so important is because it is, by definition, an AI enabled technology. And, as many of you know, AI enabled technology requires significant setup and training in order for the AI system to be able to deliver any business value.
It’s not like other IT technologies that can be configured and deployed. AI technologies need to be taught the information that you wanted to use.
It needs to be given parameters so that it understands how to respond to your customers. And it needs to be monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure that it doesn’t learn biased or inappropriate behavior. It is much more like having a “living and learning” resource rather than a static resource.
Bottom Line
It is really important that business and technology leaders define an effective digital labor strategy. I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to come to next week’s Transform Tour sessions. Jim Lundy will be discussing Copilots – “Understanding Copilots: Speeding Up the Pace of Work.”
I will be discussing Digital Labor – “Your New Workforce Digital Labor and Human Labor: More Than Automation.” And we will have a great panel on the Future of Work.
Looking forward to the session, and engaging with all of you on this topic.
See Betsy and our guest panelists for Transform Tour 2023!
AI Everywhere—Going ChatGPT | Thursday, June 15th @ 10 AM PT \ 1 PM ET
Kickoff the Summer with Aragon Research’s next #TransformTour23 stop!
Since the launch of OpenAI’s GPT service, organizations have been scrambling to put out their own copilot service. In our June Transform Tour, taking place on Thursday, June 15, 2023, we will discuss how Copilots work and how you can define a strategy to support digital labor.
