The artificial intelligence revolution is here.
AI — which entails computers and machines simulating human intelligence and decision-making via sensors, machine learning, geo-technology and understanding natural language — could add as much as $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with a potential extra 26.1% GDP gain for China and 14.5% for North America, according to an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are already showing up or are being developed in autonomous vehicles and military systems, digital assistants, GPS guidance, surveillance and generative AI tools (such as Open AI’s ChatGPT).
But will the revolution and AI’s innovations and disruptions cost you your job?
That’s one of worries regarding the AI sea change — along with whether it will create some kind of dystopian science fiction state similar to those portrayed in books and movies.
Derek Willis, a lecturer at the University of Maryland College Park, said AI will impact jobs where computers can be taught to handle more repetitive and uniform employment tasks via machine learning.
“It’s only a matter of time for those tasks to be taken over by totally autonomous AI systems or a guided system,” said Willis, who is looking at the technology wave’s impacts on information, media, finance and other sectors.
Most at risk
The jobs most threatened by AI-driven automation include administrative posts, cashiers, data entry, accountants, bookkeepers, security guards, housekeepers and retail sales clerks, according to analyses by the World Economic Forum and ChamberofCommerce.org research firm.
The estimated job impacts of AI vary widely. The World Economic Forum estimates 83 million jobs could become automated globally by 2027, including more than 26 million recordkeeping and administrative positions. A 2023 analysis by Goldman Sachs puts AI-driven jobs disruptions at 300 million.
In the U.S., more than 10.1 million jobs — including office, restaurant, food service and manufacturing workers — in the 50 largest employment markets could be lost to AI, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
Willis said the drumbeat for AI and its potential innovations, cost savings and ability to address persistent labor shortages will be hard for employers to eschew.
“It’s going to make you faster, more efficient. It’s going to increase your capacity. A lot of people are going to make a lot more money because it’s going to make them better,” Willis said of the promised AI upside.
Workers are concerned about how AI will affect the world of work, however.
According to a February survey by Rutgers University, 71% of U.S. workers are concerned about AI’s impact on jobs, including employers’ hiring and personnel decisions, and 67% believe AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates.
But only 30% of workers in the 1,008-person survey worry about their job specifically being eliminated — including just 18% of those making $100,000 per year or more — though 81% say they know little or nothing about how artificial intelligence will change the nature of jobs.
Benjamin Toff, a journalism professor at the University of Minnesota, has recently held focus groups related to AI.
“Concerns were wide ranging. Some talked about specific threats to jobs (their own or others in other industries),” Hoff said.
Others voiced concerns about privacy and worst-case science fiction scenarios “about machines taking over and becoming so advanced that humans are incapable of controlling these technologies.”
Toff said some saw the upside of AI efficiencies in their work and personal lives.
Headed toward 'The Matrix'?
The Pentagon — including DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which fostered creation of the internet — and other military and intelligence agencies across the world are spending billions of dollars on AI and machine learning for robotic and autonomous weapons, as well as defense, security and surveillance systems.
The world of warcraft — which has historically driven innovation — is leading the AI charge, even with Pope Francis and others calling for restrictions on autonomous weapons.
The U.S. Defense Department has awarded more than $4.7 billion in AI contracts so far this year, and China has deployed 600 million security cameras as part of its AI-driven surveillance network called Skynet (an ominous real-life allusion to the “Terminator” movies).
“I’m sure we don’t know the tip of the iceberg of what is going on behind the scenes,” said Christina Henderson, executive director of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance.
Henderson said she is seeing AI upend or force pivots to business models, and she understands worries about where the world and jobs are headed.
“I think people feel a bit overwhelmed,” Henderson said of the economic and ethical considerations of AI. “Where are we OK with humans being replaced, and where does it give us an uncomfortable sense we are losing our humanity and heading toward ‘The Matrix’?”
Henderson said AI has the potential to magnify digital divide issues — or it could help erase them.
Globally, the PwC analysis sees almost 89% of AI’s economic benefits in the U.S., China and Europe and other wealthy countries.
Henderson also sees the upsides, including speed of work, aiding research, generating ideas and helping smaller firms scale up, especially in “rural America and flyover states” to compete globally.
“Those things are really helpful,” she said. “AI can really add some talent to a relatively small team.”
'Good AI, bad AI'
Coral Hoh sees both sides of the AI coin.
Hoh is a clinical linguist who is part of a team of researchers who developed an AI tool to better evaluate and help kids, teens and adults with dyslexia.
“There is good AI, and there is bad AI. It’s just how people are using it,” said Hoh, whose New York-based company, Dysolve, uses artificial intelligence to address students’ reading challenges.
Hoh said the U.S. spends $120 billion annually on special education, including on learning challenges such as dyslexia, with poor results and a system that wears on kids’ psyches and self-esteem.
Dysolve — which took 10 years to develop — utilizes AI to help identify dyslexia among students and then helps correct those challenges via online academic games.
“Every brain is different. The AI just responds to each person,” Hoh said. “The child just plays game after game.”
She said trials and test efforts have shown results, and the product costs between 1% and 10% of traditional per-student special education expenditures.
“After several months of these continuous corrections, the brain somehow breaks through, a lot of pathways get cleared,” she said.
The AI product is web-based.
“They don’t need new hardware. They’re not integrated into the systems. Students just log into the website,” said Hoh, who also sells Dysolve directly to parents and home-schoolers.
Still, she said the effort has to navigate educational bureaucracies and stand out among bevies of AI vendors marketing their products.
“Everyone wants to use the AI bailiwick now,” Hoh said.
Willis wonders about how the AI wave will drive energy usage and efforts to reduce footprints because of climate change.
The International Energy Agency estimates AI will consume 10 times more energy by 2026. Data centers driving technology waves will double their global consumption — the equivalent of Japan’s annual electricity usage.
AI for mayor?
In Wyoming, Victor Miller sees AI as a way to better governance — and he is taking a novel and controversial approach.
Miller has developed an AI candidate he’s trying to run for mayor of Cheyenne in this year’s elections. Miller said he programmed the AI dubbed VIC via OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
While VIC can’t run for office, Miller can, and he said would turn over his votes to the AI bot whose programming looks to shed political ideologies and biases and would be supplemented by citizen feedback.
OpenAI — which receives major funding from Microsoft — is pulling the plug on the AI candidate, though, saying Miller is violating the platform’s terms related to political campaigns. Miller could turn to another AI engine for VIC, which stands for ‘Virtually Integrated Citizen.”
Miller acknowledges AI skeptics’ “Skynet” worries,but he wants AI widely accessible and not overregulated or restricted.
“I think there is a danger if these siloed big money places control this new technology and don’t let it out amongst the people,” said Miller, who sees the potential medical and other breakthroughs if AI is unleashed.
Most Popular
Comments / 0