The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is upon us. Everything from voice assistants and chatbots to robots to credit card fraud detection is powered by AI, and the number of applications and platforms using AI is growing exponentially. Major technology companies are opening their AI systems to app developers — a "democratization" of AI that is at least as much about business strategy: a successful app using a company's AI means money in the bank to the AI providers, just as much as it does to the developers.
Will AI result in a loss of jobs for humans? Despite fears of AI serving to curtail human jobs in favor of powerful algorithms, AI is not likely to result in any net loss of people's jobs.
What AI Can't Do
AI can do a lot. But it's important to remember what it can't do as well. There are three reasons why AI systems or products are unlikely to replace people.
The first is Moravec's paradox. What is simple for people is hard for machines: people can move with forethought, manipulate tools, and read a room from an early age. All the things people do effortlessly should be respected for the amount of thinking and integrative power they require. And what is simple for machines might be hard for humans: it would take people a long time to sort through all the videos on the internet; an AI system does it in a fraction of the time. But the ability to sort and sift massive quantities of data is not the same as the ability to interpret the data collected and develop new responsive business strategies that take advantage of the findings.
The second reason is that not all data is big. In situations where data might be scant or nonexistent, the place for human observation, experience, and intuition is crucially needed now, just as it always has been.
The third reason is that AI struggles to explain its own reasoning. When self-driving cars were tested in Pittsburgh, it was discovered that they couldn't "read" where they were on bridges. Programmers and developers were needed to create instructions for bridge traffic and movement. Similarly, AI findings in fields from medicine to education have to be examined and analyzed by humans to make recommendations, forecasts, and more.
Will AI end up taking jobs from humans? Certainly. But an equal, if not greater, number of jobs will be created for humans as the result of AI. Humans will be needed for higher-level thinking and to create instructions and forecasts for AI systems.
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