Artificial intelligence (AI) has always been a source of both excitement and anxiety. Many of us in business recognize the capacity of AI to enhance our work, boost our productivity and drive us to new heights of innovation. But there is also a sense that our headlong dive into the AI frontier is fraught with peril and unanswered questions.

Will machines replace us? Are we doomed to lose our hard-won careers to robots? And how long do we have?

The answers present a bit of a mixed bag. AI isn’t primed to replace humans…not exactly. But I believe it absolutely will change the way humans work. Indeed, it already has.

In the discussion that follows, we’ll explore some of the recent shifts in our labor market, highlight the importance of human operators in yielding the true benefits of AI, and explain why more companies are outsourcing to providers with integrated human-AI capabilities.

The Shifting Labor Landscape

The labor landscape is transforming rapidly around us. And to an extent, there is cause for the fear that AI will eliminate human jobs. It can’t be denied that effectively trained AI tools can typically complete certain tasks faster, more accurately and more cost-effectively than humans.

But we’re also seeing evidence of another, more promising pattern. The future of work is actually quite bright for those who learn how to leverage AI—how to wield this new technology to become more efficient, more effective and more accurate.

Increasingly, human jobs are being transformed into something more collaborative—a joint effort between human and machine. AI isn’t replacing humans, but humans with AI are replacing humans without AI.

Replacement Or Displacement?

Clearly, the change is already upon us. Our shared capital investment in AI has been massive. MarketsandMarkets projects that the AI market will surpass $407 billion by 2027. And the impact on the economy is expected to be largely positive. Economists predict this investment will produce a 21% net increase in the U.S. GDP by 2030.

I have seen through my own company how AI solutions are streamlining, accelerating and improving upon the work of humans in areas like data science, logistics, finance and even in traditionally human-centric areas like customer service and content creation. Human operators largely can’t compete with the speed, consistency and analytical capability these tech-powered solutions can provide when applied effectively.

But of course, all this change has consequences. According to a McKinsey Report, more than 400 million workers could be displaced from their current jobs by automation between 2016 and 2030.

This may sound dire, but it’s important to parse the language here. The term “displaced” suggests not that jobs are being eliminated, but that job responsibilities are shifting. As the functionality of AI expands, it can be expected that this technology will push human operators into new and different roles.

The World Economic Forum projects that AI will actually create roughly 97 million new jobs during that same time. While those gains don’t erase all of our losses, they do suggest something important: AI is not primed to replace human beings, but adoption will create a labor market that favors those with the ability to understand, leverage and learn from AI.

Why This Change Is Inevitable—Even Necessary

In spite of our anxiety over AI and the labor market, there are some important facts to consider. First and foremost, we are in the midst of a labor shortage. In 2024, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cited the number of unemployed Americans at 7.2 million and the number of unstaffed jobs at 8.2 million. There aren’t enough people looking for work in the U.S. to fill all these vacant positions.

Businesses feel this acutely. IBM reports that numerous companies surveyed are adopting AI solutions to contend with labor shortages. In other words, AI isn’t replacing human workers in these contexts; it’s helping human workers multiply their productivity by:

In many instances, businesses are outsourcing these solutions simply as a way to navigate the current labor shortage. But there is a catch.

Human-Powered Innovation

AI can be a valuable tool, but it is hardly a suitable replacement for human intelligence. AI excels in handling repetitive, data-driven tasks. Humans contribute irreplaceable qualities like empathy, intuition, creativity and strategic thinking.

As workers, we aren’t in competition with AI. It is merely a tool designed to make us better at what we do. The collaboration between humans and AI creates a hybrid workforce capable of outperforming any human-only or AI-only model.

Those who fear and resist AI may indeed be doomed to replacement. But I believe that those who embrace, leverage and choose to understand it may find themselves in the driver’s seat—even when we’re all cruising in self-driving cars.

Outsourcing Integrative Innovation

This logic applies to individual workers and businesses alike. Businesses that fail to embrace AI are at risk of falling behind, while businesses that seize the change will likely be better positioned to lead in the global marketplace.

I want to again underscore the importance of integrated AI technologies in outsourcing. In the face of global labor shortages and rising operational costs, seek to prioritize the balance between technological innovation and human stewardship. The labor solutions you choose should strike the right balance between automation and intuition, between efficiency and engagement, between AI tools and human operators.

In this way, the future of outsourcing will lie not in replacing human workers with AI but in creating a collaborative model where AI enhances human capabilities, multiplies human output and scales upward on a foundation of human ingenuity.

View our original article as posted in Forbes