As Robots Rise, How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Jobs Posted on : Apr 28 - 2017

In the summer of 2015, I was attending a rally in South Carolina when I heard a conservative leader tell the most heartwrenching tale. It was the story of an old coffee shop in his tiny hometown, one of those little suburban beauties where a petite old woman with curly, white hair welcomes dreary onlookers with a hospitable smile. She was a holocaust survivor, he said, ripped apart from her family on her way to the country. With opportunistic theatrics and poetic melodrama, he described to us how the old woman had served him and his childhood friends many an effervescent brew, before being outmaneuvered from business by the lucrative modernity offered at a local Starbucks. It was sad and foreboding, greatly amplified by the speaker's overt theatrics. It was also a classic tale of how time strips us away from that which we hold most dear.

I am a progressivist. I am, therefore, obviously biased when it comes to the implementation of new technology in any given industry. Every big revolution comes with its costs. The advent of new technology strips many people of their livelihoods, what menial source of earnings they have. But in the long run, it also improves the society as a whole and raises the nation’s standard of living. I realize that sounds pragmatic, probably even a bit cold, but I’d like to believe that the introduction of new technology does more good than harm.

“Today we still need technology experts to program the computers that increasingly automate our lives. Even the most powerful AI systems are still based on algorithms designed by humans, software written by humans and datasets curated and customized by humans. However, as AI eventually reaches the singularity point and is able to program itself, while it designs and manufactures the robots needed to expand its physical computing infrastructure, what role will humans play in this brave new world?” - Kalev Leetaru, Forbes

In the past few days, I have been reading a lot of articles over a lot of different publications, some of them tingling forebodings of the dawn of a new era, one where machines trump humanity in their usefulness, others promising that technology is here to work for us and not against us. Both extremities have their own valid lines of argument, backed by numbers and statistics and a whole lot of technobabble, ones you’ll find very difficult to counteract. But as I found myself piecing together both sides of the argument, a question pressed on to me, what should I believe?

If you’re the average salaried worker, you have probably wondered, as much as I have, if robots will at some point take your job. Statistics say that 47% of all employment opportunities will be occupied by machines within the next two decades. Statistics also say that about 80% of all Americans believe that they will be able to maintain their livelihood after the prophesized robotic boom.

“Evidence shows us that if technology really destroyed jobs, there would be no work today for anyone. The technological revolution we have seen in the past 30 years has been unparalleled and

exponential, and there are more jobs, better salaries. The best example is the German region of Baviera, one of the parts of the world with a higher degree of technification and robotization, and with a 2.6% unemployment. An all-time low. The same can be said about South Korea, and the world in general.” - Daniel Lacalle, Economist

In 2013, technologists Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne published a research that tried to predict the kinds of jobs technology is likely to replace in the next few decades. Middle-skilled workers, such as tax accountants, telemarketers and freight agents, were deemed most likely to be replaced by robots in the next few years, while skilled workers such as scientists, healthcare professionals, leaders, entrepreneurs, writers and artists were deemed the most secure. The explanation behind this inference was simple, humans are the most productive at professions that require them to regularly interact with other humans, while machines supersede them at such things as following patterns and executing routine work. The paper, however, didn’t take into assumption one key aspect.

The future is ever-changing. What felt impossible a decade ago is now deemed everyday and mundane. Just because robots taking over management or healthcare jobs seemed impossible in 2013, doesn’t mean it will in 2030. We already have artificial intelligence technology that can detect cancer faster than humans and healthcare robots taking up the jobs of the typical nurse. Machine learning algorithms that can mimic famous painters came in just last year. There is no telling where science will take us next, or what the next step for artificial intelligence will be.

“Predicting the future typically means extrapolating the past. It often fails to anticipate breakthroughs. But it's precisely those unpredictable breakthroughs in computing that could have the biggest impact on the workforce.” - Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

All that must sound really apocalyptic, but I’d still like to believe that machines won’t completely destroy humans in terms of earning a livelihood. At least not in the long run. We have had this controversy before every major change. During the Industrial Revolution, manual laborers feared that steam machines were going to take away their opportunity to earn a day’s bread. And they did, for the time being, but in the long run, things got much better for society in general. There is a reason why, in all this time, even with the rapid advancement of technology, nothing has truly replaced humans or made them secondary in the world’s hierarchy. The answer is simple. We live in a man-made society. And humans, being innately self-serving creatures would never let anything, technology or otherwise, turn them into secondary citizens within their own creation. It is true that machines will probably take over most of the jobs as we know them today in the coming years. However, it is also safe to assume that new job opportunities will spring up, making up for the lost livelihood, or else the concept of artificial intelligence will just be dumped into a hole as a mutually destructive technology, just like nuclear weapons. I’d like to hope for the former. Source