AI should replace clueless managers, not workers
Quoting: AI should replace clueless managers, not workers —
This got me thinking. OK, let's be open-minded. Can AI truly replace human employees in the modern corporate office? The instant answer is, perhaps. Everything is doable. With enough money and effort, you can do pretty much anything. The question is not whether you could, it's whether you should.
All right, the next question is then, who ought to be replaced by machines and algorithms? Human resources? Lawyers? Payroll? Software developers? Managers perhaps? Ah. In all of these vibrant online brainstorm articles, the focus is always on the peasants, never on the hallowed stratum of management.
The idea is that AI can predict and replicate a lot of menial, repetitive actions done by human workers today, saving time and cost and reducing errors. For example, can AI do the customer support chat functionality well enough? Can AI code safely and efficiently enough? Can AI account for the randomness of human behavior? Can AI manage teams?
My simple answer to all these is: if the factor of randomness is greater than the factor of predictable behavior, then no, AI will not be able to replace those jobs (and people doing them). The ratio between false positive, false negatives and true positives will not be favorable enough to justify the investment and use of such blackbox solutions. On the other hand, if the jobs are predictable, then you can use AI instead.
And here comes my bold claim: AI can easily replace bad managers. It can probably even do better (or less worse a job) than most humans in this regard.