Photo Illustration by Michaela Manfull and Photoshop Generative AI

AI has been growing and developing at a steady pace since COVID shut down the world. According to Harvard Business Review, since 2020, 55% of companies were reported to have been using Artificial Intelligence to grow the company while the world was on pause.

Larger businesses have been using AI to gather personalized data analysis, to engage their customers and to reduce manual mistakes made by employees. This also helps small businesses grow and develop by using the advanced technology to help with statistics and insights for their company.

“We want the human to do things that only a human can do,” Joe Strobel, an employee at Fidelity and Guaranty Life said.

AI has been a helpful tool for F&G, a popular insurance company. The company has started using AI within recent years, implementing it into their system to help with transcribing meeting notes and limit down the securities they use in their business. After AI became a more widely used tool within the company, F&G found that they were saving their users anywhere from two to eight hours while working with them, opening up opportunities for the workers to have more time to focus on other aspects of their job, and cutting down how long users would have to spend on the phone.

“It frees up our accountants to do more higher level thinking,” Strobel said. “They’re happy with the results and more free time.”

With the growing usage of AI in more and more companies comes the downside of having to actually work it into the systems, and getting the employees up to date on how to use it. This process can be timely, taking away from valuable work hours that could be spent doing other things. It can open up room for faults and errors, and if the internet or power goes out, they could lose all progress that was made in training the AI.

F&G finds it hard to reassure their employees that the computer knows what it’s doing, since their accountants are very particular with how their work is done and the quality of it. Even after being shown that the program knows what it’s doing, the accountants still find themselves checking over what work the AI did to make sure it’s up to company standards.

“The biggest downside is trying to figure out how AI is going to fit into our control environment,” Strobel said. “Getting everybody up to speed with AI is definitely a challenge.”

Looking into the future, companies like F&G can see AI being a permanent part of their business. With the system already being put in place for things like phone calls, meetings and organizational tools, the company was able to cut down workers who averaged 50 hours a week, down to 40. This helps save the company money with the lesser hours, letting them focus more on other investments to further their business.

“It is an interesting concept, and I have enjoyed working with it,” Strobel said. “It’s not as easy as flipping a switch, but it is an exciting time.”