Will AI really replace your job?

“I’ve talked to a lot of CEOs and learned very quickly that they’re not thinking about AI replacing us; I can say that with complete authority,” said Ronnie Sheth, CEO of SENEN GROUP, a company based in Austin, Texas. Strategic advisory firm whose main objective is to help companies unlock and integrate AI into their workflows. Sheth spoke with Fortune about the dangers and potential of AI implementation during an interview at London Tech Week earlier this month.

Fear and speculation that AI will take over jobs has infiltrated every industry. Amazon recently laid off more than a hundred customer service workers. the Fortune Jason Del Rey reported, part of its continued effort to cut costs and invest in automation. New reports from the New York Times and Citigroup is warning entry-level bankers and financiers about the risk of replacement, and just last month, Sinovation Ventures CEO Kai-Fu Lee said he anticipates AI will replace 50% of human jobs. in the next decade.

But individual CEOs could remain cautious, Sheth said. He verified the name of a large construction company that is a SENEN client. “I just talked to their CEO, who (obviously, as a construction leader) is thinking about robots and AI algorithms that could be used to do some of the menial tasks on the ground.” The boss wasn’t convinced, she said. “Many workers asked him if AI would affect their jobs. He told them: ‘No, but it will increase your security.’ Here’s how CEOs are thinking about this differently. And that’s the right way to think about it.”

That may be little comfort to CEOs who are getting nervous about their own usefulness and whether they themselves can someday be replaced. Sheth isn’t worried about that either, at least not for effective leaders.

“As CEO, my job is to do a few things,” Sheth said. “Manage culture. Take the company in a direction where it does not go bankrupt. Drive sustainable growth. To really improve the community I’m in.”

Sheth said many CEOs are more concerned about the human aspects of business, such as branding and connecting with customers, than the cold numbers.

Their clients, ranging from Fortune 500 companies like Nike and IBM to startups and NGOs, have been willing to abandon their short-term revenue and growth goals to invest in sustainable and viable brand expansion.

“I’m not going to name names, but there are some very, very large retail brands that we work with, who have been through interesting times, because they decided to go big on AI and forget about their brand,” Sheth said. “It’s not a smart idea. “They are having to back down on branding.”

Replacement theory

In the short term, no jobs will be “truly successfully replaced,” Sheth predicted. “But if we think 10, 15, 20 years from now, maybe assembly line jobs? Maybe a little bit of accounting, maybe just a little bit of basic marketing activities, data entry administrative work.”

Sure, he said, these can be replaced or outsourced, but that doesn’t mean the people who have been doing those jobs will be left without other options. “I think there’s a balance between resizing the workforce and also putting policies in place to ensure that AI is used for human good and not to take away people’s livelihoods.”

It is the responsibility of business leaders (and even public sector government officials, Sheth said) to consider how to mitigate the impact of AI on working professionals. Taking it a step further: “I don’t think a company that says it wants to focus on AI or data is on the right path,” Sheth said. “You are not values-driven or values-centered. You are what you focus on.”

The dangers of data about people

Based on the years of projects Sheth’s company has done with major companies, he said he has noticed “companies that come to me and say, we want to do more with data. “We want to be data-driven, we want to be data-centric – these are the companies that are set up to fail.”

That failure is due to a one-sided mentality: focusing on numbers instead of people. “On the other hand, companies that say, ‘we have all this data, now how do we unlock value for the business, for our customers, for our employees, for our community?’ “It’s a different state of mind.”

The difference between the two, he said, is chasing the answer to focus on data, rather than unlocking value for people. “As business leaders, we really need to start focusing on ensuring that policies and regulations are very, very, very clear on human centricity and we need to make sure that AI doesn’t hold back human innovation,” Sheth said. “Right now, we’re seeing a lot of fear-based regulation and policymaking. I really want innovation to materialize, without compromising human value.”