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| Image Credit: Gerd Leonhard |
In 1900s London, there used to be a job which went by the name of knocker-upper. The job of the knocker-upper was to knock at your bedroom window with a long stick and wake you up so that you could reach your workplace in time. When alarm clocks became a common commodity, this vocation was lost. Fast forward to 2019 and it appears that we are revisiting the 'Knocker-Upper' story - the only difference is that the alarm clock has been replaced by 'Artificial Intelligence' and the knocker-upper is us. All of us.
One of the biggest concerns surrounding the 'commodification' of Artificial Intelligence or AI is the impending loss of jobs. Studies after studies have forecast job losses with robots or algorithms or some such flavor of AI driven tech replacing what people are currently doing to earn a livelihood. The 2019 AI Newsreader story from my previous post (and an automated news content generator called Wordsmith), for example, has created an understandable scare of job loss among journalists. Well the key question is - 'is it for real ?' and the safest answer is that the opinion is currently divided. Some experts sound alarmist, some sound optimistic while some other say - we really don't know. If you ask me for an opinion, I would like to say that large scale job disruption is inevitable and governments around the world would be wise to take a serious note of it given the already high rates of unemployment.
The other fear, of course is , that AI could turn rouge and destroy the human civilization. If you feel this might be far fetched and improbable, read this story about the Microsoft's Tay Chat bot and why it had to be shut down. Similar alarm was created in the media when chat bots in an AI experiment invented their own language to communicate with each other, a language that humans could not understand. Luminaries like Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking have repeatedly echoed this concern in no uncertain terms. A much talked about documentary - Do You Trust this Computer highlights similar views. The bottom line is that while benefits of AI technology are huge, so are the concerns. So should it be halted. No. Should we move ahead with caution ? Absolutely yes.
Well there it is. What say reader ?
Sir, as you have mentioned in the blog that "One of the biggest concerns surrounding the 'commodification' of Artificial Intelligence or AI is the impending loss of jobs".
ReplyDeleteIts true that jobs would be gone, but at the same time new jobs would also be created by AI.
A news article in BBC states that countires that are going to be most affected are Developed one but a country like India will only have about 9% of jobs replaced by emerging technologies(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42170100).
Another study titled 'Future of Jobs in India', commissioned jointly by FICCI and Nasscom with EY shows that by 2023, 54 million Indians will hold jobs unheard of today & in the same news article Gartner has predicted that AI will create 2.3 million new jobs while eliminating only 1.8 million jobs in 2020 https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/artificial-intelligence-future-jobs-ficci-job-study-nasscom/story/265976.html
For the sake of innovation and being competitive, we are enhancing AI and making it problematic for ourselves only. We are the creators of AI and so we should not let AI overpower us which is actually happening (like losing jobs etc.). It should be for the ease and not for the destruction, so it's high time to move ahead with caution.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this post, sir.
ReplyDeleteThis concern regarding AI has us in real murky waters. Human Beings are naturally curious animals. We usually tend to go after things incomprehensible trying to make out sense and have been fairly successful in doing so. But what if, one day just like 'Dark Matter' AI becomes incomprehensible or goes rogue. With the advent of internet it can't be destroyed physically. And it makes this thought even more disturbing.
Dear sushovan Why AI needs to be destroyed when it is helping in so many ways. As kids we have heard so many times that "Science is a good servant but bad master" I think its the same case with AI.Its because of AI that life expectancy of humans can increase because of better diagnosis , it s just one thing where AI is helping & there are lot many fields. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/the-guardian-view-on-ai-in-the-nhs-a-good-servant-when-its-not-a-bad-master) It will be BAD because of unethical use of AI for warfare , breaching privacy etc. & this had happened with almost all inventions of science. As sigmund freud has quoted "Men are moral than they think & far more immoral than they can imagine" so can be AI. It can be moral & helpful until man becomes far more immoral than he can imagine.
DeleteThanks you for this post, Sir.
ReplyDeleteAI has been always a fascinating world for me being a Hollywood fan. To be true Hollywood brought me closer to the AI world specially the 'Star Trek' and 'Terminator' series. It is interesting to share that many of the technological development along with AI has been inspired by movies, e.g- The first appearance of the tablet was in the 1969 film '2001: A Space Odyssey', several inventions from Star-Trek are commonly in use today in the field of communication, like mobile phones, teleconference systems and voice driven interface (Siri, Cortana) etc.
Having said that, this interest had made me follow a magazine called 'digit' which exposed me to the various facet of AI, either its the algorithmic calculation of ads by AI that pops up every now and then on our screen, heavy robots employed by industries and development of robot like 'Sophia' etc. The challenge of replacing job is at alarming level but what is to be noted that technology has always been a threat to jobs but humans have evolved the same to cope with it. What should be the concern here, as you hinted, to take measures to integrate our education system and the society as a whole to develop alongside the jobs that would be created or better say shifted by the AI.
One of my major concern is also on the impact it would make to our environment as more of AI driven high-end robots, cars and drones etc are being created, they will surely create their footprint (Don't know how much Elon Musk is contributing in that).
Sorry for posting such a long comment. The knocker-upper was quite an interesting exemplification though.
Thanks once again.