The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

There has been a lot of discussion about AI recently, and much debate about what jobs it can and will make obsolete. In fact, humans have been looking uneasily over their shoulder at the approach of AI for much longer than that. From being proposed in early science fiction stories - famously depicted as the sentient supercomputer HAL in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the image of the unstoppable cyborg from the 80’s and 90’s Terminator movies or just being able to ask Siri to organise our lives, it is no surprise that people are apprehensive.

Already, AI can write our essays for us - although a little weirdly - it can auto reply to emails and will autopilot your high-end electric car. In a recruitment setting, we’re already hearing from some of our fund management clients about the very real possibility of AI portfolio managers making investment decisions and LinkedIn has algorithms that will search for candidates, presenting you with a list of suitable people within seconds. These and much more are undeniably useful tools, but can they really take the place of people?

Here at JMES, we like to think that they haven’t. Can AI chat with your cricket-mad colleague about the latest test match, will it laugh at your teammate’s terrible Dad jokes or debate the merits of the latest ‘it’ restaurant with your foodie boss?  Yes, AI can come up with a list of candidates for a role, but can it sit down to interview them, look them in the eye and come away knowing whether or not that candidate’s personality - or lack of it – will fit the role, the team and the client? Does AI know that the quirks of a particular client means that they won’t consider a candidate from a particular background or who didn’t go to the ‘right’ university? Put simply – it doesn’t. It can’t. Yet.

So there is still definitely something to be said for humans and the simple art of conversation.  Want to chat about a new role or some people to fill them? Get in touch with the JMES team. We promise a real person will answer.