AI Should Amplify People, Not Diminish Them

By Chris Landen, Managing Director, Exacta Technologies

The conversation around AI in business is usually framed as a single question: which jobs can it replace?

But that’s the wrong question; not because it isn’t important, but because it treats a large potential opportunity as a threat. When we at Exacta have examined the ways in which AI genuinely applies to a custom hardware manufacturing business, we have come across a more useful question that lies beneath it:

What repetitive, administrative or information-intensive tasks can AI take on so that our staff can spend more of their time on the sorts of work that call for judgement and expertise?

Black and White images of an Exacta employee working at his desk.

The fact that there is such a distinction is important and this is the principle on which our own AI deployment is being built.

What AI is actually good at

Strip away the hype and AI is already extremely effective at a number of practical tasks such as locating and organising information, detecting patterns in data, preparing initial drafts, summarising large amounts of material, cutting down on repetitive administrative work, ensuring consistency, and accelerating early-stage analysis.

That’s really useful. In a manufacturing environment involving complex specifications, extensive technical documentation, and detailed customer requirements, there is actually a great deal of friction which AI can eliminate: the time taken searching for information, putting it together, reformatting it, and re-checking it, which adds to the cost but brings no value.

For our customers, the benefit is straightforward: quicker access to information, better-informed decisions, greater consistency, and more of our people’s time focused on building relationships and solving the problems that genuinely require their expertise.

What people must continue to own

That has no bearing on the aspects of the job which matter most; it is people who retain responsibility for final decisions, ethical judgement, understanding the context, maintaining customer relationships, exercising technical accountability, questioning an output which appears to be wrong, and knowing when the information available to you is incomplete.

AI brings speed, scale and analytical capability. People bring judgement, accountability, creativity, context and relationships. The real opportunity comes from combining the two. It is in confusing these that AI deployments can go wrong; either because organisations overestimate what AI can do, or because fear prevents them from using it where it genuinely adds value.

Deployment has to involve the people doing the work

We do not consider it appropriate to treat AI as a mere exercise in improving management efficiency. The best opportunities for its application are generally recognised by those who are closest to the work rather than by those who are furthest from it.

Then we are putting direct questions to our teams: where is there unnecessary friction? Which tasks take up time without contributing value? In what areas do errors or inconsistencies keep appearing? And what information, if it were any easier to access, would enable you to make better decisions quicker?

The answers to those questions are helping determine where we deploy AI, rather than a top-down set of “efficiency targets”. The role of leadership is to provide the tools, boundaries and permission to experiment, while the people doing the work are often best placed to identify where AI can genuinely add value.

Responsible deployment means real controls

We are aware that it is precisely when enthusiasm is not accompanied by discipline that organisations end up in difficulties with this technology, which is why our approach features clear boundaries; namely, safeguards regarding data confidentiality, the use of only approved systems, human examination of any item that is important, clear accountability for the results, adequate training for our staff, and a realistic appreciation of the limitations of AI-generated output.

AI is by no means foolproof, and viewing it as if it were would pose a greater risk to our business than choosing not to use it at all.

What this is for

We are looking at the use of AI as a means of boosting our capability, responsiveness, and consistency; not as a way of decreasing the value or significance of the people who work in this organisation.

We cannot give a general assurance that AI will never affect the way any job is carried out, since that would be unrealistic and unnecessarily limiting given the rapid pace at which the technology is advancing. Our aim, however, is clear: to use AI to increase the capabilities of our employees, removing friction, improving decisions and allowing our people to spend more time on work where their expertise genuinely matters.

That is a more honest view than either of the two extremes; namely the naive belief that AI makes no difference and the alarmist claim that AI will replace everyone. The actual truth, as we have experienced it so far, is not only more useful but also more interesting than either of them.

As our programme develops, we will provide further details about what we have actually discovered. At the moment, this is the principle upon which we are basing ourselves.

About Exacta Technologies

Exacta Technologies is a UK-based specialist in bespoke server manufacturing, designing and building custom enterprise servers tailored to the specific requirements of software companies and their applications. From hardware specification and configuration to deployment and global support, we provide an end-to-end service that helps our customers deliver reliable, high-performance solutions to their clients.

Talk to Exacta about your server requirements.