AI will work better with humanity, says NYU professor

Sundararajan, professor of entrepreneurship and digital technologies at the Stern School of Business, told 'Euronews Business' that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will work best with humanity: “I think that people who understand how to take advantage of AI, to complement their humanity, they are going to have it easier than people who try to shy away from AI, because you know that generative AI at some point has a very high probability of replicating all or part of what you do.

“So an important first step in deciding how to move on to what I'm going to do next is to learn how to use AI, so that you can at least educate yourself on what it does well. How good is it? to be in a couple of years? And what are the niches to which I, as a human being, can dedicate myself to remain relevant?” he adds.

How can entrepreneurs use AI to complement their human capabilities?

According to Sundararajan, AI can be most useful in situations where it takes care of more routine or time-consuming tasks, such as answering emails, creating presentations, writing endless lines of code, etc. This leaves entrepreneurs free to deal with more creative or sensitive tasks, such as ideation. This extends to thinking about new products, finding new target markets, as well as new ways to elevate and renew existing products.

In this way, by combining the best of human and AI capabilities, entrepreneurs can offer their customers more efficient and higher quality products, but with the human touch. Sundararanjan says: “For me, one of the greatest promises of AI, and especially generative AI, is its ability to equip people with skills they lack and create a whole new generation of micro-entrepreneurs who own a small business. portion of the economy.

“New healthcare workers, new financial analysts, new educators, new paralegals, new creatives, all of whom may have the motivation and the ideas, but not the technical or creative skills or some of the technical knowledge to be able to translate that business vision into reality”.

It also highlights that, in several cases, even people who have no intention of being entrepreneurs can be drawn into it by all the opportunities that generative AI offers. Similarly, in the field of education, both entrepreneurs and educators can use AI to impart high quality education to disadvantaged communities or less developed countries that do not always have the same opportunities.

The boundaries between AI and human capital are vital

However, no matter how many advances AI can bring to the workplace, there is still a need to draw a line between technology and human capital, in order to foster entrepreneurship and protect jobs.

Touching on some of the dangers of companies using AI in work processes, Sundararajan believes that “many companies are going to customize AI for their best employeescapturing how they do their work, capturing how they write successful business proposals, how they write good marketing content.

“And I think that's where the danger starts to grow for the employee because, if your capabilities start to be replicated in an AI system that may have been initially developed to help you work, What happens when you leave the company?“, he asks. “Your AI assistant, your digital twin, could be left behind and someone who earns half as much as you can end up being almost as productive as you, because they have your intellectual capital.”

In the short term, although AI could help release part of the workload of employees, it could also discourage high-performing employees from giving their best to a job, for fear of being easily replaced by AI. In this way, they may want to preserve some of their human capital, to remain an attractive candidate for their next job.

In the long term, this could lead to several underpaid employees and further job losses around the world, as AI gets better at reproducing human work.