Citrix Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa, Brendan McAravey
by TINTSWALO BALOYI
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – A TECHNOLOGY executive has allayed fears of Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing jobs but believes its adoption would create opportunities for humans.
Brendan McAravey, Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa at Citrix, believes in 2020, AI will continue to grow but in the contexts of narrow AI and machine learning.
“The real question is not how many jobs will be replaced by 2020, but how many new opportunities are created, how much more innovation will we get from our staff when we can use the machines to our advantage,” he said.
McAravey said AI would most likely not “take over the world.”
“The chances of us being subsumed into a world of artificial general intelligence any time soon is extremely unlikely,” he said.
“However, think about what we see every day – our interactions with voice assistants, with recommendation engines that get smarter and smarter, helping us to buy more things we don’t really need.”
McAravey said, for example, if humans could let the robots take the menial tasks, this would allow industries to free up human capital.
“It frees you up from mundane things that tie up many hours in your workweek. It helps you as organisations to deliver better customer service, better customer engagement.”
McAravey made the sentiments as Citrix outlined its projections for 2020.
He described 2019 as a significant year for the technology sector after it brought rise to numerous technological innovations and new business models that have changed the face of global economies.
“2020 promises even better technology,” McAravey projected.
“We’re on the edge of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), where the speed of technology and the way it impacts business is going to be like nothing we’ve ever seen before, and simply has no historical precedent.”
Citrix forecasts the major trends in 2020 to be the hybrid Cloud, Everything-as-a-Service (XasS) and the so-called gig economy and evolution of the Chief Information Officer (CIO).
These are just some of the developments we can expect in 2020. If anything, 2019 showed us that it’s a great time to be in the technology industry.
– CAJ News