Finding Balance Through Technology: How AI Can Help Us Work More Effectively
Inefficient processes are a major driver of long workplace hours — and an incredible waste of time. We know these pain points all too intimately: Multiple iterations of documents across members of a team. Emailing back and forth fifteen times to schedule a meeting only to find all times slots are booked. Manually filling out paperwork only to have it disappear when you hit “submit” due to a disconnect between two systems. You can see where this is going.
If a process is repeated manually numerous times, we should work to automate it so all systems integrate smoothly and communicate effortlessly. This is an area ripe for optimization through applications of machine learning. With the concepts and technology behind artificial intelligence being central to my Ph.D work — and now the companies Basis Set Ventures partners with — I naturally find myself continually salivating about the ways AI can and already does make us more effective at work.
There are two ways to increase effectiveness: increase output, or reduce overhead. Here are some examples of how we might achieve both.
Optimize for efficiency by making meetings more productive
The average employee spends 5.5 hours in meetings each week, meaning most people have at least one to two meetings a day. Research suggests 50% of these meetings are a waste of time and cost U.S. companies $37 billion per year — which underscores the importance of making meetings more effective.
How do we enforce an effective process so we don’t waste time chatting about irrelevant topics? Make sure everybody has heard — really heard, as in, laptops-down — what went on in each meeting? Make sure next steps are fully captured and understood? Make sure people who are absent are fully briefed and able to move forward at the same pace?
Imagine working in an office where all meetings are run by an AI assistant that knows your process the best. This AI assistant ensures meetings start with a clear, pre-populated agenda and end with action items; notes are taken automatically, with key points summarized and distributed before participants even return to their desks. To-do items are listed, with action item reminders popping up for the right date and time. Follow-up meetings are scheduled and added to each recipient’s calendar, automatically. A full recap is immediately shared with anyone who missed a meeting. We often leave meetings wondering if everyone is on the same page, but with the help of this AI assistant, ambiguity or disagreements might be realized much sooner, giving everyone an opportunity to align quickly and avoid additional back-and-forth or subsequent incorrect actions.
The above scenario could make meetings more productive and allow us to generate more output in the same amount of time — and likely reduce the need to over-schedule meetings. It would enforce a consistent process and surface potential misalignments. It would enable the completion of more tasks even while meetings are being conducted (e.g. scheduling follow-up meetings and assigning action items); it would also make it easier for leaders to manage a large team and/or multiple different projects and workflows.
Not all of this is available today, but some elements are — for example, Clara is an AI assistant that handles scheduling, optimizes timing among multiple participants, alerts of calendar conflicts, and reminds when it’s time to work on a to-do list item. Amazon is sending Alexa into the office to do a subset of the tasks from the above vision as well. While this is an area that needs to be approached with extreme caution to ensure privacy and security, much of the benefit is possible or becoming possible today.
Save time via workflow automation
Another way to increase effectiveness is to reduce time wasted on inefficiencies. Just about every job is plagued by duplications and inefficient team delegations — but it’s 2018, so why does that have to be the norm? When someone finishes their part of a project, a smart system should tag the next person responsible and enable the entire team to work on the document at the same time. Automatically check duplications and allow team members to stay in sync at all times. Trigger instant notifications when someone finishes their work. Make all previous knowledge and content easily searchable, or even surface that when needed based on the content you’re working on.
To go a step further, what if all paperwork and forms were automated? Think school applications, mortgage materials, and hospital records, to name just a few. Shouldn’t the hospital know me already (perhaps even through a camera that does facial recognition) after the tenth time I’ve checked in? Each of these situations can tangibly and measurably increase efficiency and give individuals the gift of more time to spend on the rest of our day.
Some of these technological advancements are already happening, some are just around the corner, and others might take five to ten years or more. Just several years ago, sending a file required a not-inconsequential use of time and effort. Today, an AI assistant can schedule a meeting for you. Technical advances like these merely scratch the surface of how AI is making us more effective and saving us valuable time while increasing productivity.
This article by BSV founder Lan Xuezhao was first published on Forbes; you can find the original here.
