Be afraid, be very afraid…or don’t be. It all depends on what research you look at. AI is here to stay, possibly here to rule us all, but will it really take our jobs away or will it just make us morph into a different workforce?
According to some of the more frightening predictions, around 66% of jobs will be affected by AI, with around 25% being replaced completely. In 2013, some smart people at Oxford University predicted nearly half the jobs in America would be wiped out by now, yet they are not, and there is historic support to suggest job annihilation occurs much more slowly. The best example I’ve found is the automated telephone switching system: invented in 1892, fully implemented within the next 20-odd years, yet the number of manual operators continued to grow for a further 70 years!
Admittedly everything moves much, much faster now (showing my age again) but some governments are trying to put the brakes on and any delay will allow the economy to create new avenues for labour; about 60% of jobs in existence now did not exist 70 years ago.
My view? Truly original, creative thought and output will be the hardest to replace, especially when these mega-intelligent programmes are essentially born of a particular type of brain, living in its mum’s basement. I hope I am right.
One of my favourite movie quotes (aside from, “At my signal, unleash hell”), is from Jurassic Park when Dr Malcolm says, “Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
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