Is AI Coming for the Industry’s Jobs?

“Let’s be honest, a lot of this AI to me is like a Black Mirror episode,” said Erica Gilerman, General Counsel at Triton Recovery Group. “It was something that three years ago when you’re first watching Black Mirror, you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ and suddenly it’s here.”

The most talked-about technology lately has been AI. The fast-paced, easy, and accessible tools that AI is giving life to have the rest of the world questioning how necessary humans will be for many business functions.

“I think anyone who says that jobs won’t be lost because of AI is not being honest,” said Shawn Smith, CEO at Dedicated Financial GBC, a commercial recovery firm.

Companies that are built straight from AI won’t have to cut back on hiring, Smith explained, but he believes that once more businesses begin integrating AI, the need for more people won’t be there.

“I think what you’re going to see more of is AI being leveraged instead of hiring more people,” said Smith. “They will be able to grow without needing to hire more and reallocate people to doing more of the connection piece and allow AI to do the process piece.”

Gilerman, at Triton, a firm that also does commercial recovery, believes that some roles cannot be fully replaced by AI.

“Will it fully replace people,” said Gilerman. “I don’t see that happening anytime soon, especially in our space.” An example she offered is the necessity of having humans oversee what an AI is doing when it comes to underwriting to make sure it’s not getting it wrong. She also thinks that AI could be useful in automating mundane tasks.

“And not in a way that is bad, but more so of busy work versus truly being able to delve deeper into what we need to get done and getting it done faster,” she said, “which is what I really think AI is going to assist us in, getting everything done faster.”

“Everybody used to type everything with a typewriter,” said Shmulik Fishman, CEO of Argyle, a fintech company that focuses on employment and income verification, “And when computers came out, there was a huge worry that everybody that was a typist, all those jobs would be eliminated, and that the office would have this huge decrease in the number of people inside of it. The exact opposite thing happened.”

This outcome could happen all over again.

“Humans have a really amazing ability to leverage tools to make their day better, and to graduate themselves to working on more important things that tools or computers cannot do for them,” Fishman said. “And I think a ton of that’s going to happen with AI as well.”