Track: Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mobile robotics are threatening to take over the office work (White-collar jobs). This concept of AI is not the first to replace the human work force. The first concept that took over the human workforce was automated machinery that took over the blue-collar jobs (production and general employees). It is important to understand that Artificial Intelligence first took off in the 1980s and 1990s and it discussed that it can add the competitiveness of the furniture manufacturing SMEs. The aims of this study is to find out if furniture manufacturing SMEs are ready for Artificial Intelligence in their enterprises. This study is qualitative, where a case study about furniture-manufacturing SMEs was developed. This study discovered that these SMEs are not ready because they do not have the necessary resources to can operate AI. Consequently, the implementation of AI will mean that most people will lose their jobs due to their jobs being replaced by a computer system. However, AI and computerisation automation could improve the quality of products and the services. A replication study must be done on other sectors so that a generalisation can be made about the overall readiness of AI in SA’s SMEs.