A revolution that will free workers from gruelling tasks or the destroyer of millions of jobs? New artificial intelligence capabilities have simultaneously prompted huge excitement around workplace productivity and dire warnings for employees. The Financial Times has selected three industries that are among the first to adopt the technology to analyse how it is being used in everyday work.

Professional services

• AI tools enhanced so they are easy to access and can assist practical legal case work

• Biggest time savings on tasks assigned to junior staff

• Adoption has been swift but has limitations — it is not always correct

• Rather than replacing jobs, AI could intensify work

It has been a strange year for lawyers such as Alex Shandro and Karishma Brahmbhatt. All around them, economists, technologists and journalists have been making predictions about what new advances in AI might mean for professional workers. Headlines warning that “AI is coming for lawyers” have been everywhere. 

But Shandro and Brahmbhatt have a different vantage point — not from the top down but from the shop floor. As lawyers at Allen & Overy in London, they are already using the new generative AI tools in their everyday work. Roughly 3,500 employees at A&O have access to Harvey, an AI platform built on a version of Open AI’s latest models, which have been enhanced for legal work.