With the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard and other AI tools taking over our daily repetitive tasks, it will be inevitable for automation to take over as many jobs as possible. We've reached 100 days into 2023 and the growth of AI tools and $Billion Unicorns have been expanding at greater speed than anytime in prior decades, in whichever direction we see.
AI could threaten many jobs, especially white-collar ones, according to Goldman Sachs. The report says 18% of work can be automated and 300 million jobs are at risk. In the hindsight AI could also help some workers be more productive and free up their time. Doing more with less has become more important than ever before as more and more workers and organisations are navigating uncertainty and shaping the future.
Change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making the change…
The deployment of AI and automation technologies in various sectors is already generating value through personalised product recommendations, identifying fraudulent transactions, and more.
The latest AI advances promise even more value, with deep learning techniques having the potential to account for $3.5 trillion to $5.8 trillion in annual value, which is 40% of the value created by all analytics techniques. In addition, AI and automation have the potential to increase global prosperity and lift the global economy by reversing the decline in labor productivity growth, potentially reaching 2% annually over the next decade, with 60% of this increase from digital opportunities.
On the contrary, AI systems with human-competitive intelligence pose significant risks to society and humanity, as acknowledged by top AI labs and extensive research in this field.
As AI systems become more advanced and human-like in their abilities, we must consider the ethical implications of their development, such as the potential for machines to flood information channels with propaganda and untruth, automate away fulfilling jobs, and eventually replace humans.
Such decisions should not be delegated to unelected tech leaders, and powerful AI systems should only be developed once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks manageable.
One such initiative taken by prominent leaders in the AI field and beyond wrote an open letter to pause giant AI experiments. Here are the key take aways from the letter :-
It calls attention to the risks of AI systems with human-competitive intelligence.
The letter urges the need for planning and management of advanced AI with commensurate care and resources.
It calls for a pause in the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least 6 months to jointly develop shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development.
Recommendations for AI research and development should focus on making today's powerful systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.
Yes, AI and automation do face technical and practical challenges, such as data and algorithm issues, ethical and legal concerns, and uneven adoption across sectors and regions. The AI Index report from Stanford University shared that Europe is having a new data protection law put in place, while the US, Asia, and Europe differ in their AI investments.
Image: IPSOS survey on Product & Services - benefits of using AI by country
But how will AI affect your work?
Automation will affect many work activities, especially physical and data-related ones. Only a few occupations can be fully automated, but most will change as workers collaborate with machines.
Speaking of collaboration, an AI developer came up with voice activated GPT4 coding system to develop a pretty mundane social networking app, that went viral (it reached circa 5.3Million in just 3days across social media)
The world of work is on a paradigm shift with AI being our co-pilot... Hoping for an optimistic future!
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