Freedom from techno-slavery
Effect of AI/Automation on jobs
Anything that involves emotional intelligence is unlikely to ever be replaced. But at the bottom end of the value pyramid — things that are about replicating a process — those will be automated
Jeremy Campbell — CCO of SD Worx
There are many people whose jobs are to drive. I think it might be the single largest employer of people. So we need to figure out new roles for what those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quickly.
Elon Musk — Entrepreneur and Car Salesman
AI is certainly showing us and bidding us toward exciting horizons, brave new worlds and hitherto unknown career fields whilst perhaps signalling the death-knell for many existing ones (think driverless cars, delivery drones, autonomous delivery robots, automated picking, route planning, intelligent-loading etc.). For instance, digital AI assistants are extremely popular so what happens to the traditional carbon-based personal assistants? Will AI eliminate some traditional careers? The answer is not a simple yes or no. Yes, AI will affect some careers (indeed it is doing so now) and revolutionise some fields. But no, AI will not eliminate every career. A basic example to illustrate this would be the invention of keyboards. A few decades ago, typists were working on typewriters; people were worried that the keyboard would eradicate their jobs. However, the typists who learned and adapted to keyboards remained in the field and continued to work.
Similarly, we can apply the same analogy to the integration of AI into everyday human life. Certain careers have been remodelled as AI has become more and more popular for example data entry and data sorting, nowadays, several software systems undertake these tasks using AI as well as completing rudimentary and advanced basic data-related functions (comparisons, calculations, forecasts and in some instances fuzzy “knowledge-based” decisions) more efficiently. At the same time as some of these more historical or “traditional” roles disappear, other newer fields with particular job roles have emerged and come to prominence, for example, business analysts are becoming more and more prevalent, a position which makes applied cognitive and corporate knowledge-based sense of datasets, numbers and statistics derived, created, or shaped by certain AI-based applications (remember though in my previous articles on AI in the workplace, I explored the possibility of hierarchically structured task-focused or narrow-stream AI to provide pseudo-AGI). We can be sure that some careers will shuffle off the employment coil, but hasn’t that been the case for centuries? With the death or demise of some roles/careers so, new ones will arise from their ashes and offer new opportunities to people from the same field.
How much is AI going to modify our culture and way of life?
As more and more artificial intelligence is entering the world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter leadership.
Amit Ray — AI Scientist
If we do it right, we might be able to evolve a form of work that taps into our uniquely human capabilities and restores our humanity. The ultimate paradox is that this technology may become a powerful catalyst that we need to reclaim our humanity.
John Hagel — Founder, Beyond Our Edge
Artificial Intelligence is not only “another invention” or step on the technology ladder but it is going to radically change the way humans view, experience, and live life. Since the dawn of time inventions have come along that have fundamentally changed society and created a paradigm shift, each of which brought both opportunity and challenge, fear and hope. The impact, opportunities and societal “gain of function” progress that AI offers is frankly breathtaking and perhaps that is why many people are so concerned about it or perhaps express concern about how governments and societies will respond to this technology. These concerns are by no means unfounded or ill-formed as they occupy the minds of many a great thinker across politics, industry, technology, philosophy and sociology and we need to move beyond the zeitgeist of “AI/Robotics = largely bad” to explore the inevitable good, benefits impacts and opportunities honestly and openly as we seek to mitigate or take advantage of those rather than resisting change due to fear of the unknown.
In the past, great inventions have modified cultures (some overnight) and living styles; the phone, TV, mobile phone and the internet are some of those big change-makers that directly affected humanity for good or bad depending on your position. But each of those spawned new businesses, new opportunities, new platforms and new challenges both legal and economic.
We can confidently say that Artificial Intelligence has already impacted our culture and lifestyle even though it is in its infancy however, it has rapidly become a primary focus and point of interest/discussion for almost every part of (particularly) Western society. People are trying to make sense of the costs, ramifications, and benefits to humanity thus, it makes complete sense to accept that AI will continue to modify our cultures and people will (hopefully) adapt accordingly however, the hope remains that a shift in focus from the why or how to the consequence for goodwill ultimately drive the development outside of purely economic-military-political-criminal applications, it is perhaps a flawed hope that the good outweighs the bad and the societal model of AI application shifts towards the positive but without that hope we gaze into an abyss of human declination so, hope we must and strive we must toward that ideal future.
In my final post, I will look at an idea as to how we might offset any negative impact and use the outcomes of AI/Automation to enable human flourishing as we move forward into the 2030s and beyond.
So there we are. I would love to get your feedback and comments on whether you think AI/Automation/Robotics will be a force for human good — drop me a line at shaun.turner@thoughty.studio or leave a comment here.
