Learn AI now or risk losing your job, experts warn

It's smart, efficient and gaining speed. 

In fact, you might be surprised to hear how much of the workload artificial intelligence can already handle at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. 

"In our hospital, we have a saying that AI is not going to replace clinicians, but clinicians who use AI are going to replace clinicians who don't use AI," said Dr. Muhammad Mamdani, vice-president of data science and advanced analytics at Unity Health Toronto.

In a rapidly changing world surrounded by technology, this is a warning that workers in many industries may now need to take seriously. Artificial intelligence is here and experts say workers across most sectors — from finance to law to coding — now need to learn how to use AI themselves or risk being replaced.

"There is an urgent need for many people in the workforce to start taking artificial intelligence seriously — if they aren't already. Learn how to use it so it isn't used against you," said Ottawa economist Armine Yalnizyan, who focuses on the future of work.

Unity Health Toronto, the hospital network that includes St. Michael's, has a dedicated applied AI team and says it has launched more than 50 innovations since 2017.

"We have algorithms that are running, monitoring patients, every hour on the hour. It has reduced human effort on simple tasks by over 80 per cent. Tasks that normally take two to four hours every day by a few people, it's reduced to under 15 minutes," Mamdani said.

In an era of chronic labour shortages in health care, the technology is offering huge relief to staff who Mamdani says can now better focus on patients while also saving lives.

But has it already replaced workers? Not yet, said Mamdani.

But that doesn't mean it won't.

The most recent Statistics Canada report in 2020 suggested up to 40 per cent of Canadian workers were at high to moderate risk of job transformation. Predictions on when that could happen range from five to 20 years. But there is evidence to show that shift is already occurring. 

Mamdani said St. Michael's could reduce staffing by 20 to 30 per cent through efficiencies using things like natural language processing to go through data and collect information. 

Just one algorithm the hospital has at work now does a vast majority of scheduling for nurses, for example in the emergency room.

"It looks at historical data, all sorts of patterns. It scrapes the web for weather data to see if there's going to be a snowstorm tomorrow night. It looks for events like marathons on Lakeshore Boulevard on Sunday," said Mamdani.