You may be feeling vulnerable to AI (you have probably explored ClickUp, which says it can consolidate daily tasks and prioritise them accordingly, and Wally, which promises to draft emails on your boss’ behalf) but experts and your fellow assistants are certain there are intangibles that tech can’t compete with quite yet.
Mansoor Soomro, a senior lecturer in sustainability and international business at Teesside University in the UK, argues that AI can’t yet handle anything beyond the base-level of EA duties. So, your boss might opt to outsource some work to AI but the tools come with limits – namely that they lack sensitivity and nuance of human colleagues. “AI still struggles with complex tasks where an element of human-level decision making is needed. AI can’t be intelligent in terms of emotion and that’s the toughest nut to crack,” Mansoor explains.
If the expert opinion isn’t enough to settle your concerns, how about trialling the tools yourself? Joanne Manville, a UK-based assistant and founder of her own virtual assistant company, has been a regular user of AI to help productivity – tools like Asana, Calendly, IFTTT and Zapier, which many Executive PA readers will be familiar with. Recently, she has started to explore chatbots for tasks like writing social media prompts and AI-driven software for transcribing meeting notes. Joanne and her team also stay ahead of the curve by supporting clients who want to test tools like ChatGPT for their business.
Taking her experience into consideration, Joanne is certain a large part of an EA/PA’s job simply can’t be replicated by AI and agrees with the human aspect highlighted by Mansoor. “AI and automation are good for functional tasks, but people really appreciate the human-to-human relationship and the customer service. Clients often choose their new assistant based on the person’s personality and how they clicked with that individual,” she says.
Working with your boss through emotional ups and downs is a pivotal part of succeeding as an EA, adds Joanne, and AI isn’t capable of that. “You need to be able to sense when someone is stressed, judge what’s going on and decide whether to ease off or offer more support.”
Another key point to consider – if your CEO had the option to replace you purely functionally with AI, would he or she even consider the switch? Joanne thinks not, highlighting the fact that many people would still prefer a human assistant to join a meeting and take notes as opposed to AI. After all, what if the meeting is highly confidential? Many bosses and companies wouldn’t like the thought of the recording being on a server somewhere.
Joanne adds that some of her clients have tried AI… But end up returning to human assistants. “We took on a client who was using AI to do their meeting notes but they were so far off the mark they now work with us to do their minutes.”
