perspective amid often-exaggerated claims surrounding the technology. For example, he cautions against underestimating the significant organizational changes and robust data infrastructure required for successful AI implementation. At the same time, he stresses that the true value of AI extends far beyond mere cost reduction — it can enable growth and bolster innovation. When it comes to identifying operational areas that AI can improve, Brynjolfsson encourages foodservice equipment and supplies distributors and manufacturers to seek out tasks in areas such as demand forecasting, inventory management and route optimization. These tasks often involve complex data analysis and prediction, making them ideal for AI to improve efficiency and accuracy. “Predictive maintenance for equipment and augmenting customer service interactions are also prime candidates for AI-driven enhancements,” Brynjolfsson adds.
Elevating, Not Replacing, Human Potential But just because AI is driving change doesn’t mean
there’s no seat for humans in the car. As AI becomes more prevalent in the business world, Brynjolfsson envisions the technology augmenting human work by handling routine tasks and freeing people for more creative and interpersonal activities. With this in mind, he says companies should invest in training employees to collaborate with AI tools, seeing them as partners that enhance their capabilities — not replacements. Brynjolfsson takes a deep dive into this AI approach
in The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human- Like Artificial Intelligence. The paper’s namesake is mathematician and early computer scientist Alan Turing, who back in 1950 proposed an “imitation game” as the ultimate test of whether a machine was intelligent, i.e., could a machines imitate a human so well that its answers to questions are indistinguishable from those of a human? “Ever since, creating intelligence that matches human intelligence has implicitly or explicitly been the goal of thousands of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs,” Brynjolfsson writes in the paper, noting that the benefits of human-like AI include “soaring productivity, increased leisure and perhaps most profoundly, a better understanding of our own minds.”
Of course, it’s one thing to theorize about humanoid machines, but it’s something else to create robots that do real work. It’s a common fallacy, Brynjolfsson writes, to assume that automation drives most productivity-enhancing innovations. Instead, he explains that augmentation has been far more important to overall productivity as technology has progressed over the past 200 years. As an example, Brynjolfsson notes that employers are willing to pay much more to a worker whose capabilities are amplified by a bulldozer than one who only works with a shovel. In the same way, Brynjolfsson believes AI won’t replace managers; rather, managers who use AI will replace those who don’t. “Companies must invest in training employees
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