In the longstanding argument about whether AI will replace or complement human beings, the new watchword is symbiosis. Most recently, Elon Musk used the term to describe how a brain implant might merge human and digital intelligence. But you don't need to go full cyborg to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship between humans and AI. Instead, you can reimagine worker roles and business processes to enable people and AI to collaborate and achieve something greater together than they could apart.
Given the swell of fear and questions around AI - from how many jobs will be lost to who will train these new systems - the question of how to achieve human-machine collaboration has taken on new urgency. After all, these mutually beneficial relationships, focused on augmentation rather than displacement, stand to boost business value while lessening risk of people losing jobs.
In order to create a symbiotic AI workforce, organizations will need to use human-centered AI processes that motivate workers, retrain them in the context of their workflow, and shift the focus from automation to collaboration between humans and machines.