As technology innovations continue to transform every industry and job role in the United States, the service industry is certainly no exception. In fact, Gartner believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will create 2.3 million jobs in 2020 while only eliminating 1.8 million, for a net gain of half a million jobs added to American company payrolls.

In the hospitality and sales verticals, technology innovations, including customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and point-of-sale (POS) tools, have come a long way. Well before the term CRM was coined, salespeople would keep journals to track customer activity and acknowledge a sale through handwritten thank-you notes. Before POS systems, we had cash deposit boxes, followed by simple cash registers, then barcodes, mobile payments and now cloud-based technology.

Inevitably, the course of every industry will continue to evolve, incorporate and need more technology to be successful. AI is the next innovation poised to make an impact on hospitality. Many businesses will adopt intelligent machine automation, and by 2022, Gartner predicts that one in five workers engaged in mostly non-routine functions will rely on AI to do many of the humdrum tasks associated with their roles.

Read the full article at Forbes