From facial recognition to personal assistants: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a development that is increasingly becoming an important aspect of our everyday life. When discussing prospects concerning AI and its impact on the job market, there are often different views. Some people ignore future prospects and consider AI to be like science-fiction, while others fear the future and are afraid AI will take over jobs and become superior to mankind. There is also a group that emphasises the positive effects of AI and expects no difficulties regarding possible unemployment (Müller & Bostrom, 2016). It is interesting to consider which of these scenarios is most likely to become a reality.
AI nowadays
It appears that AI cannot be ignored any longer, since the technology is already being applied in several industries. For example, personal assistants like Siri and Alexa are being used to give directions, send messages, schedule appointments and source the web for information. After a while, their algorithms start seeing patterns and can predict requests thanks to machine learning (Adams, 2017). In this case, AI is more of a life improver than a job stealer. However, virtual assistants, or AI in general, have taken over jobs in several industries. For instance, in the music industry in the United States AI is taking over venue planning, booking, and PR work. With AI, an intelligent bot is developed, that has access to a massive amount of information, hence it can more rapidly respond to requests (Katz, 2018). In this example, AI is already more skilled than people, and this technology is expected to only improve.
A glimpse into the future
Many scientists and economists argue that many jobs will supposedly disappear due to AI (Rotman, 2017). What I think is important to wonder is whether this will give a massive rise to unemployment rates or rather result in significant shifts in employment. Futurist Ray Kurzweil notices many people fear AI will cause unemployment. However, there is a long history of concerns regarding job loss through technology development, Kurzweil points out during a seminar (Kurzweil, 2017). In 1900, almost half of the people worked in agriculture and a quarter in manufacturing. Today, these percentages are equal to two and nine percent. Instead of 50 percent of the people being unemployed, they found other jobs, that did not even exist back then (Polli, 2018). Therefore, while jobs are being automated and eliminated, new industries might emerge and new jobs will be invented (Kurzweil, 2017) (Mahdawi, 2017). Still, since AI will cause a transformation regarding employment, it might be relevant to redefine the way we prepare youth for the job market. This corresponds with the view of psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, who wrote about the future of AI. He states: “Rather than letting intelligent technology diminish our brainpower, we should learn to better control it, beginning in childhood” (Gigerenzer, 2017). This means that to succeed in a world full of AI, the new generation will need a different skill set. Since computers will become better at handling explicit knowledge, the educational focus should lie on fundamental human abilities like teamwork, leadership, dealing with crises or rely on intuition (Owen, 2017). This would imply a major change is needed in the way children and adolescents are being educated.
How to be prepared
In response to the previously discussed views on the future of AI, I would expect the positive view to be the most likely to become a reality, compared to the ignorant and the negative perspective. I think AI could make a lot of things in our daily life easier, and I also believe that new occupations will arise. However, this scenario still contains difficulties, since it is expected that the entire working environment will radically change. The current problem is, people are being educated for jobs that will not be around for much longer. Therefore, unemployment seems not to be the real issue here, but rather not having the right people for the right jobs. If governments invest in retraining and establish a new form of education, people can be educated and trained for the work that is or will be available. Only then will humanity be prepared for the new era of technology.
References
Adams, R. (2017). 10 Powerful Examples Of Artificial Intelligence In Use Today. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/01/10/10-powerful-examples-of-artificial-intelligence-in-use-today/#1c811562420d
Gigerenzer, G. (2017). Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/D_283_2017.pdf
Katz, A. (2018). How Virtual Assistants Have Taken Over The Music Industry and Beyond (and Why It’s OK). Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/02/07/how-virtual-assistants-have-taken-over-the-music-industry-and-beyond-and-why-its-ok/#15e74a184240
Kurzweil, R. (2017). Mirror | Ray Kurzweil debunks Technological Unemployment again. Singularity University. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6OjxVnxt5k
Mahdawi, A. (2017). What jobs will still be around in 20 years? Read this to prepare your future. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/jobs-future-automation-robots-skills-creative-health
Müller, V., & Bostrom, N. (2016). Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion. Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence(376), 555-572. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-26485-1_33
Owen, J. (2017). Education must transform to make people ready for AI. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/ab5daa64-d100-11e7-947e-f1ea5435bcc7
Polli, F. (2018). AI And The Future Of Work: Will Our Jobs Disappear? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/fridapolli/2018/03/20/ai-and-the-future-of-work-will-our-jobs-disappear/#5519c15650ab
Rotman, D. (2017). The Relentless Pace of Automation. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603465/the-relentless-pace-of-automation/
Hey Lotte, thats surely a nice perspective! I agree that mostly education is a problem. From the first lecture we have already learnt that quite often AI is expected not to work alone but together with humans, as they are needed for e.g. management positions. If we take the example of a ticketseller, AI will still replace his Job, but maybe create a new management position. The problem is though that it will take the ticketseller a lot of time to reskill to a Management position while some other graduates might already be ready to be recruited. I think AI creates many opportunities but also makes it increasingly tough for low-skilled workers to keep their jobs and keep on doing what they are good at, especially if they are already older and reskilling might not be a great Investment. I think These technological changes mainly benefit the young workers.
Hi Marina, thank you for reading my blog and for your comment! It is indeed true that if you are relatively close to retiring, it does not make sense to invest in retraining. On the other hand, currently, certain jobs are being replaced, but this has been rather limited so far, which could be a reason that many people do not see the urgence of the issue yet. What i am trying to point out with this blog is that, if we start making changes in eduction now (indeed especially for low-skilled workers) we will be prepared for major changes in the future. But you’re indeed right that it is very important to think about how we can make sure earlier generations will not get excluded.