As AI companies grow in valuation and usage, the debate continues about how AI is replacing humans in various jobs. Studies suggest that roles where AI can automate most tasks will be impacted, though some analysts believe AI may also create jobs, with the displacement effect being only transitional.
David Shim, CEO of meeting notetaker and intelligence company Read AI, told TechCrunch at Web Summit Qatar earlier this month that even with the rise of AI tools, it will ultimately be humans who decide the course of action, and their job will remain important. He equated the technology with using maps in a car. He said there will always be a human in the middle, and the job will get easier over time. He gave the example of driving, where people once used physical maps to decide their route, but now follow directions from Waze or Google Maps. The human is still the one in the middle who can decide what happens.
Shim acknowledged that AI would affect jobs, noting that advertising agencies may lose human roles in favor of automated tools. However, he also noted that tech platforms would need jobs to oversee the automation process.
Abdullah Asiri, founder of AI-powered consumer support tooling startup Lucidya, said that he believes AI will replace tasks but not entire roles. He explained that when his company’s clients use Lucidya, customer support agents often take up different responsibilities. Some become supervisors who guide other humans and AI, while others take on relationship-building and business development tasks using the time they saved.
Read AI’s Shim noted that meeting notetakers have freed up humans from taking notes manually. He said that no one wants to sit and take meeting notes, and as that task is taken away, people have more time to focus on other things. They can send reports faster, respond to customers with better context, and make better decisions, rather than spending most of their time gathering information.
As tech companies like Read AI and Lucidya increasingly use AI tools, they aim to keep their teams lean. Currently, Read AI’s customer service team consists of just five people, who serve millions of monthly users. Shim noted that the company uses AI tools to make a small team more productive and give them more context to do their jobs more quickly.
These companies report productivity gains. Read AI said its sales tool helps predict the state of a deal using data from CRM systems like HubSpot and Salesforce. The startup said it has seen deals worth $200 million approved through that system. Shim said Read AI captures 23% more context with each update, which can be used to evaluate what worked or didn’t in a lead call.
Lucidya’s Asiri also noted that his company uses AI tools, including Read AI, for meetings and marketing asset creation. He said the company wants to scale outcomes without scaling headcount. He stated that the goal for any company is to hire people who are AI native and strong with AI, but we need to be realistic. Today, this skill is still being developed, and you cannot find a lot of people who have very strong AI capabilities, not in building AI, but in using it. Asiri noted that people who can build agents to help them do their job would be more desirable to hire.
Regarding customer perception of AI, Shim noted that just a few years ago, many people were hesitant to have AI notetakers in meetings and didn’t understand why a bot was on the call. However, now people are more receptive to notetakers as long as they are given controls around recording.
Asiri said that Lucidya discloses to users when it’s using a voice AI to communicate. He said that for users, issue resolution is more important than the fact that an AI bot is handling their calls. He explained that it’s all about resolving issues and finding customers’ problems and solving them. As long as the AI agents focus on that part, customers are happy that their issues are being resolved. The customer really doesn’t care whether it’s fixed by AI or a human, as long as it’s fixed fast and accurately.