Despite what many people think, AI will never completely take over the human workforce. Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as “the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.” The rise of AI has been a popular subject lately and has been at the top of many workers’ minds, because according to Pew Research, 48% of experts surveyed “felt that robots and digital agents will displace a significant number of blue- and white-collar jobs.”
Their worry might seem justified; a Gartner survey shows that the use of AI in many sectors of business has grown by 270% over the last four years. As AI’s capabilities only continue to increase, people are becoming more afraid that one day, the human workforce will consist solely of robots. The problem is that people fail to realize that AI will never really outsmart humans but it will in return create millions of new jobs. First, let’s explain why robots aren’t coming for your job.
Firstly, AI lacks specialties that only humans have. According to BuiltIn, AI is not very good at work that requires precise hand-eye coordination, dealing with unknown and unstructured spaces, and most importantly – using empathy. Humans have emotional intelligence that AI and robots will never be able to replicate. This emotional and social intelligence is needed for many jobs in the human workforce, such as teachers and therapists.
AI also only works with inputted data and is programmed to work a certain way. This means AI cannot adapt to its surroundings or brainstorm relevant solutions as well as a human can. Forbes corroborates that “AI programs are typically only capable of ‘specialized’ intelligence, meaning they can solve only one problem, and execute only one task at a time. Often, they can be rigid, and unable to respond to any changes in input, or perform any ‘thinking’ outside of their prescribed programming.”
This means that AI will only impact repetitive, usually manufacturing jobs. Fields that need empathic, political and social skills will never be taken over by robots, which include lawyers, teachers, therapists, writers and medical professionals, according to the Economic Times.
Besides the fact that AI will not take over all human jobs, it’s actually predicted that AI will only enrich the human workforce. In fact, AI is predicted to create 97 million new jobs by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum.
One reason AI boosts jobs is that people create AI. Thus, an increase in AI also increases the demand for digital work. Sean Chou, CEO of the AI startup Catalytic, clarifies that “when you look at AI, there’s this nonstop need for training, for data, for maintenance, for taking care of all the exceptions that are happening. How do we monitor AI? How do we train it? How do we make sure that AI’s not running amok? Those are all going to become new jobs.”
Additionally, cooperation between AI and humans increases productivity within the workforce. As mentioned earlier, AI will automate many repetitive jobs. According to the World Economic Forum, AI taking over less intellectuallydemanding jobs allows “workers to focus on higher-value and higher-touch tasks that often require interpersonal interactions. These newly enhanced jobs will create benefits for both businesses and individuals who will have more time to be creative, strategic, and entrepreneurial.”
Forbes summarizes that “humans and machines have different relative strengths and weaknesses, and it’s about the combination of these two that will allow human intents and business processes to scale 10x, 100x, and beyond that in the coming years.”
Humans should no longer see AI as a threat to human dominance, but work to develop its presence in order to increase productivity within businesses and economies around the world.
Written by Noor Mahmoud of Thomas S. Wootton High School