Artificial Intelligence: Creating or Destroying Jobs?

 

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Artificial Intelligence is a term that most of the people keeping up with the latest trends have heard of at least once. In simple words, AI is a software that learns to do a specific task from a set of data, as compared to traditional software, which is manually coded by people. In today’s age, AI or Artificial Intelligence is a huge point of focus in every industry, ranging from smartphones to healthcare and even more. 

AI is a major point of focus for every industry these days and it’s getting more advanced as time passes. Keeping these things in mind, people have started questioning if AI will have an impact on employment in the future. People believe that AI will replace most tasks that needs human input and reduce the economic pressure on the industries. Most industries are steering towards AI for reducing costs and increasing productivity. In light of recent events, AI is also being used to speed up drug research and for early detection of COVID-19. 

The first thing that people need to understand is the fact that massive technological changes have been taking place in this century and this is not a new phenomenon. For example, when the third industrial revolution began in 1969, the manufacturing processes were being automated and this resulted in the loss of many jobs in that time period. Similarly, in the 1980s. Personal Computers started making their way to the general public and it led to fears regarding mass unemployment. But as time passed, their fears were proven wrong. 

AI is sometimes referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. Despite the fact that AI is being developed rapidly, it still needs a lot of human input and resources to build. Also, it needs to be supervised by a team of experts to actually learn to work on real life applications. At its current stage, AI can only replace very few jobs and its main use is to augment current jobs. Also, the mass adaptation of AI will take much longer as compared to its development due to the costs of implementation and maintenance.

In a recent study by Oxford University, it has been revealed that only 47% of the jobs in the U.S are ‘theoretically’ possible to be automated. The actual percentage of jobs that will be lost to automation would be much less than the projected value. For understanding the kinds of jobs that AI will replace in the next few decades, take the example of ATMs (Automated Teller Machines). ATM’s were built to reduce the costs of opening new bank offices to cope with the increasing demand. 

The bank employees did not lose their jobs, but their job description changed. Now the work of the employees was more focused on increasing the productivity of the banks and improve customer relations, as their previous jobs were now being done by the ATMs. This also helped the overall economy to improve at the same time. The same thing applied for automation in the third industrial revolution. Automated manufacturing processes were being made to reduce the number of human labours needed and this resulted in the loss of jobs. But it increased the safety and living standards of the workers while improving the economy at the same time. 

Whenever a new technological advancement was made, jobs were lost. But new jobs were always created and the balance was maintained. As automation increased, new jobs were generated for the displaced workers and the other workers were augmented by the new technology. Following this pattern, the implementation of AI should also work in a similar fashion. 

Some jobs are more susceptible to be taken over by AI as compared to others. These include jobs that require emotional intelligence that is only present in human beings and cannot be replicated in machines in the near future. Some good examples of jobs that cannot be replaced by AI would be – Managerial posts, content writers, software developers, editors, graphic designers, etc. 

Managerial posts would be safe from automation as this job requires the ability to quickly adapt to new situations and hence requires high levels of intelligence. Also, graphic design is another field that cannot be automated as it requires emotional intelligence and creativity, which cannot be replicated. 

But there are some jobs that can be replaced by AI in the foreseeable future. These include – Drivers, salespersons, proof-readers, couriers, telemarketing, etc. Automation in these sectors is relatively easy and the probability of AI being adopted widely is quite high. 

To conclude, Artificial Intelligence is one of the biggest technological advancements the world has seen, and it will continue to improve our lives while displacing some jobs at the same time. But the possibilities of new jobs that would be generated by AI are endless. 

Written by - Soumya Deepta Sarkar