The oft-discussed topic of "AI employees" - will they replace humans?

On March 12, 2024, Cognition, a US IT venture company, suddenly announced a new AI called "Devin" that it was developing in-house on YouTube. The following text was written in the description of the video.

"Introducing Devin, the world's first fully autonomous AI software engineer." The video showed an AI that received a vague order from a human, such as "I want you to make this kind of website," then built the site structure itself, planned the tasks for implementation, programmed, corrected any errors that occurred, and finally completed a website according to the order.

AI using large-scale language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, was built solely on the premise of supporting human work. That alone excited people around the world as something that would greatly change the way humans work, but "Devin" was a technology that went far beyond that. Being fully autonomous means that AI can complete tasks on its own, and what is in sight beyond this technology is a workplace without humans.

In the movie "Terminator 2," the AI ​​of the future showed its fangs to humanity. The rebellion of AI due to the singularity is a sci-fi story from a long time ago, but when fully autonomous AI like "Devin" appears, it makes you worry about how much room there will be for humans to intervene in work. Fortunately or unfortunately, "Devin" has not yet been released to the public.

The official website has a waitlist for early experience, so you can just register and wait for your turn. However, Cognition has announced a partnership with Microsoft. In other words, in the future, it is planned to integrate "Devin" with Microsoft Azure, which is used by programmers all over the world. What will happen to the division of AI and human responsibilities?

In fact, AI has already begun to advance into the workplace. Recently, more and more websites are using chatbots, some of which use generative AI, and there are more companies offering a service called "AI employees" than we imagine. Try searching for "AI employee" on your computer. You will be surprised at how many different fields AI employees are being employed and working in.

▶With the advent of ChatGPT, the PC magazine section of bookstores began to stock a large number of books explaining generative AI. Now, generative AI books have become as commonplace as books on how to use office software.

What are AI employees? We spoke to FiveVai, Inc., which actually develops and provides AI employees to companies, about the current situation of AI employees. FiveVai, Inc. was founded in 2015 with human resource development and digital transformation support as its core business. By providing human resource development and digital transformation support in parallel, the company has supported growth while providing solutions to the challenges its customers face.

The company began offering its "AI employee" service using generative AI as part of its digital transformation support in 2023. "FiveVai's AI employee is an effort to evolve in-house operations by using AI to support them. Currently, it is being introduced in the beauty and financial industries, and we have received positive feedback from customers," says Kazuyo Machida, who works in the company's digital transformation division.

The trigger for FiveVai to work on AI employee services was the emergence of ChatGPT. "With the emergence of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, an environment has been created where AI can be easily used even without specialized knowledge. This is the "democratization" of generative AI. AI, which was previously only available to a limited number of companies, can now be easily introduced by small and medium-sized enterprises and used to work on digital transformation.

We felt that these could dramatically improve the efficiency of white-collar work, so we conducted research. If it becomes possible to improve operations using generative AI, it should be a breath of fresh air in business."

Currently, FiveVai's AI employees automate the processing of invoices and receipts, collect customer feedback and data, and perform tasks such as market analysis for corporate planning and support in proposing business ideas. "We aim to reduce the burden on employees while increasing the competitiveness of companies," Machida says of the significance of this. However, the company's AI employee service is currently focused solely on supporting humans. What did FiveVai think of "Devin," a fully autonomous AI?

"Devin is a groundbreaking technology that automates software design, debugging, and deployment. We believe that the emergence of AI like "Devin" will greatly change the future of software development. In particular, the real-time error detection and automatic correction functions are a big step to further facilitate collaboration between AI and humans."

When asked what the big step to further facilitate collaboration between AI and humans is, he said, "As fully autonomous AI technology spreads, software engineers will be required to have new skills such as AI management and advanced design capabilities. We believe that by utilizing the capabilities of "Devin," not only will we be able to streamline and speed up operations, but we will also create an environment where humans can focus on the creative aspects.

"In preparation for this future, FiveVai is also focusing on the further evolution of AI technology and the associated human resource development," he said. In other words, it seems that they believe that the evolution of generative AI will not take away jobs from humans, but will be the catalyst for a future in which AI and humans who manage generative AI will share the same work. In fact, since the current generative AI is developed based on LLM, it has not yet acquired "non-verbal communication skills."

For example, it has the technology to find out the true intentions of customers from their gaze and gestures, and to hear euphemisms unique to humans. According to Machida, engineers also recognize the importance of AI understanding customers' facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, etc., and providing appropriate feedback, but with the current generative AI, the output is inevitably standardized, making it difficult to respond individually or differentiate.

FiveVai envisions a future in which humans can concentrate on human-like work that makes use of their creativity and empathy by delegating routine business processing to AI employees. As AI employees evolve and become more widespread in the future, will this mean that the work of modern people, which continues to increase due to IT, will be reduced? "As AI evolves, it will become increasingly important to create added value that is unique to humans," Machida concluded.

In the future, as long as humans have innovative ideas and the ability to gain empathy from other companies, they may be able to focus on presentations and leave all the actual work to AI employees. This could mean that unicorn companies with only one employee will become a reality. The day may come when AI employees will force us to rethink the definitions of productivity and GDP.

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▶A new partner to improve business efficiency: "AI Employee" (FiveVai, Inc.)

This system was developed to help improve business efficiency by utilizing large-scale language model (LLM) technology with ChatGPT at its core. It analyzes emails, documents, business logs, etc. to promote the automation of routine tasks. It supports corporate digital transformation. AI automatically handles tasks such as creating regular reports and responding to general inquiries. Employees can focus on more creative tasks, and the system also makes suggestions for improving employee communication based on the data obtained from the analysis. Customization is also possible.

▶ "Devin" (Cognition Labs) - A robot that thinks, judges and completes its work

Cognition, a US startup with just 10 members, suddenly announced a fully autonomous generative AI. The company calls Devin an "AI software developer." As the name suggests, it operates independently without human intervention, and has the ability to correct program errors in real time after finding them. Development is currently progressing at a rapid pace with the backing of Microsoft, but it has not yet been made public. It has attracted attention as an invention that will change the way humans work.

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