How can we prepare ourselves for the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? According to Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba, we have to change the way we teach otherwise the future generation will lose their jobs.

Despite the fact AI has a lot of advantages – for instance increase of productivity, lower costs and more precision – we are still concerned about the fact that AI will exceed human intelligence and supplant us as the dominant species on Earth. In the last 200 years, manufacturing brought jobs. (Bundy, 2016) But today, because of AI, manufacturing is no longer the main engine of creating jobs. Products that, for example, were made in China will only be made by the Internet in the future.

Preparation time has started

To benefit from the advances in productivity brought by AI, we will need to reallocate to new types of jobs. If new jobs are not created, workers are likely to remain locked in their previous jobs or become unemployed. (Frey, 2017) According to Jack Ma, the new technology will destroy bunch of jobs, but it will also create plenty of jobs and the service industry will be the largest engine of the job creation. However, the current approach to education is not preparing today’s youth for the realities of tomorrow’s work. We have to teach them to be very, very innovative and very creative. (Ma, 2017)

Adaption will create jobs

In consequence of AI, a distinct wave of job displacement will almost certainly occur. New technologies in areas like AI and robotics will both create some totally new jobs in the digital technology area and, through productivity gains, generate additional wealth and spending that will support additional jobs of existing kinds, primarily in services sectors that are less easy to automate. (Wilson et al., 2017)

In my point of view, the future will be automated excessive, but human interference is still crucial. Humans are the best watchdogs for upholding norms of human values and morals. What do you think the future will look like according to the labour market?

References:

Bundy, A., 2016. Review of “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence”.

Frey, C.B., 2017. The Future of Jobs and Growth: Making the Digital Revolution Work for the Many.

Futurism. (2017). Jack Ma: the way we teach is going to make our kids lose jobs. [online] Available at: https://futurism.com/jack-ma-the-way-we-teach-is-going-to-make-our-kids-lose-jobs/ [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].

Horowitz, J. (2017). Jack Ma: We need to stop training our kids for manufacturing jobs. [online] CNNMoney. Available at: http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/20/technology/jack-ma-artificial-intelligence-bloomberg-conference/index.html [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].

Wilson, H.J., Daugherty, P. & Bianzino, N. 2017, “The Jobs That Artificial Intelligence Will Create”, MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 14-17.

Imagine you have an appointment with your therapist; you enter the consulting room, you look up, and look right into two bright glowing robot eyes. How likely is it that a robot will be the future therapist?

ELIZA, your first therapist chatbot

The first therapist chatbot named ELIZA is actually already fifty years old. She was created in the 1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at the MIT’S Artificial Intelligence Lab. ELIZA is a primitive natural language system that uses pattern matching to parody a Rogation psychotherapist whose main method is to make a patient feel relieved by sharing their problems with a listener. ELIZA is not able to think as a human being, she simply uses linguistic tricks to keep the conversation initiative needed to ensure that the patient is the one who is answering questions and explaining or extending their previous statement. For instance, the word ‘sad’ prompts the reply ‘I am sorry to hear you are sad’. (Rzepka & Araki, 2015) Some people would believe they were talking to a real empathic person. In spite of that, giving advice to a person suffering from mental conditions can go wrong, and the task becomes a moral dilemma.

The next ELIZAs

Since ELIZA, there have been a lot of improvements in computer therapy. There are virtual human agents now that aim to initiate user engagement, increase awareness of symptoms and treatments for users who may be reluctant to talk to a traditional counsellor. (Cameron et al., 2017) Virtual help agents are even counseling Syrian refugees. Can these virtual human agents improve on human therapists? According to Alison Darcy (2017) there is a lot of noise in human relationships. Noise is the fear of being judged. Would people share more if they could talk to an anonymous algorithm?

The moral dilemma

Chatbots can create another option for users who do not want to receive face-to-face treatment, however there are many ethical aspects to consider. Building an empathetic chatbot is a risky place, what if the chatbot provides incorrect or apathetic responses? In my opinion, we should not risk the mental health of human beings yet. For now chatbots can be used to cure loneliness or just as a listener. However, maybe in the future, we will look in those bright glowing robot eyes!

References:

Cameron, G., Cameron, D., Megaw, G., Bond, R., Mulvenna, M., O’Neil, S., Armour, C. and McTear, M., (2017). Towards a chatbot for digital counselling.

Molteni, M. (2017). The Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now. [online] WIRED. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2017/06/facebook-messenger-woebot-chatbot-therapist/ [Accessed 24 Sep. 2017].

Romeo, N., (2017). The Chatbot Will See You Now. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-chatbot-will-see-you-now [Accessed 24 Sep. 2017].

Rzepka, R. and Araki, K., (2015). ELIZA fifty years later: An automatic therapist using bottom-up and top-down approaches. In Machine Medical Ethics (pp. 257-272). Springer International Publishing.