By Ali Sarrafi

Seemingly every day, a new headline warns that artificial intelligence is coming for your job. It’s a familiar story: the robots are taking over, human work is doomed, and we’ll all be replaced by algorithms.

The reality is far different.

AI isn’t here to steal your job. It’s here to take the boring bits of it away.

Whilst I fully understand people’s anxiety, too much of the debate around AI is shaped by fear, fuelled by viral predictions of mass unemployment and “sentient” chatbots.

What I’m talking about is that an AI system will assist you, it does not replace you. An AI ‘agent’ if you like, that an employee delegates routine administrative tasks to, in order to free up vital time. This ‘agent’ isn’t sentient, nor does it have a mind of its own. It works from your commands. Think of your own personal digital intern that does your chores.

Most of the AI being built today isn’t remotely close to replacing human intelligence because it doesn’t intend to. What it does excel at is automating the repetitive, administrative tasks that bog down workers every day: think data entry, meeting notes, expense forms, scheduling and all the other things you wish you didn’t have to do.

That’s not job destruction; that’s job liberation.

We’re already seeing companies use AI to streamline the invisible but time-consuming parts of work. In an office, hours previously spent filing digital paperwork are being........

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