Despite the fact that the world is actively adopting automation and digitization, human capacity to comprehend a situation and its nuances before providing an answer continues to be vital.
The type of jobs that AI will simply not be able to replace in the nearest future are those that involve creativity, empathy, and complicated political and strategic roles. These include:
Social work, education, and the training of experts in AI are a few fields that will still depend on human labor. Although these jobs might still benefit from the development of AI, so far the technology cannot mimic the empathy and social skills that these professions demand.
Experts believe that there are several weaknesses that will prevent AI from replacing specific jobs. These include the inability to:
To assist in adjusting to a new reality with greater AI involvement, people will need other people. We need people to make the adoption of technology possible thus decreasing workloads and not vice versa.
With the arrival of ChatGPT, economic prognosticators across the country are talking about what AI could do for the economy.
A recent poll by the University of Chicago’s IGM forum (the inspiration behind Scioto Analysis’s Ohio Economic Experts Panel) found only 2% of panelists disagreeing with the statement that artificial intelligence will have a big impact on incomes over the next few decades.
One large impact of artificial intelligence on the U.S. economy could be to transform middle-class jobs. Artificial intelligence could make jobs easier or even eliminate the need for certain jobs by fulfilling the key functions of these jobs. Many of these jobs are those currently in the middle class.
For our purposes here, I will define “middle class jobs” as jobs among the most common in the 20th to 80th income percentiles. I picked these from a great NPR analysis from 2014 that presents American Community Survey data on the most common job categories per income percentile.
Primary school teacher is arguably the most common middle- and upper-middle-class job, making up the most common job category in the 50th to 60th and 60th to 70th income percentiles and coming just behind managers in the 70th to 80th income percentiles.
A 2020 study by McKinsey estimated that the average K-12 teacher spends 22 hours a week on preparation, evaluation and feedback, and administration, 10.5 of which could be reallocated through AI and new technologies. Student instruction and engagement, coaching and advisement, and behavioral-, social-, and emotional-skill development, takes an average of 24.5 hours, only 2 of which can be reallocated. This suggests that AI could free up time teachers spend on preparation, evaluation, and administration in favor of more face time with students.
Seeing as this study also found that 70% of teachers identify lack of time as a primary barrier to personalizing learning, this could also help teachers tailor learning more toward students.
Managers are the top employment category for the 70th to 80th percentile of incomes and right behind primary school teachers for the 60th to 70th percentile.
Managers are often the people who will have to make decisions about when artificial intelligence is employed or not. According to a Wharton School blog, AI could be relevant to managers who spend a lot of time on administrative tasks, screening resumes of job candidates, customer service, marketing, and merchandising.
Truck Drivers
Truck drivers might be the jobs that are most threatened by artificial intelligence technology. Trucking is a top 3 profession in every income decile from the 20th to the 70th percentile in the United States.
Autonomous trucking could functionally eliminate the need for millions of trucking jobs across the United States. Goldman Sachs projects that in 20 years, the United States will lose 300,000 trucking jobs a year to automation. Given that the average trucker in the United States is 47 years old, it is probably not a good time for young people to get involved in the trucking industry.
Secretaries are the cornerstone lower-middle-class employment category in the United States. They are the most common employment for jobs at the 30th to 40th and 40th to 50th percentiles of income and are only behind nursing aides for the 20th to 30th percentile of income.
While a lot of the duties of secretaries (scheduling, managing records) are being automated, there are other roles that could be harder to automate. As long as managers and professionals need someone with a human touch to assist them, secretaries will be in demand.
What I take away from this list is that the idea that AI will take away middle class jobs is a bit simplistic. While trucking is almost sure to suffer as an area of employment, I don’t see primary school teachers, managers, or secretaries being quickly automated away. If anything, their jobs will get easier and free them up from tedium in order to carry out more mission-critical work. I also wonder which jobs could arise from AI: will AI open opportunities for people to do things they weren’t able to do before?
It seems that the best way to be realistic, looking at the data available, may be to be optimistic.
Source: https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2023/4/28/will-ai-destroy-the-middle-class
Worker groups, which have lost much of the clout they had before the 1980s, identify AI as a potential threat to workers' rights as well as employment, for example if there is no human control on AI-steered hiring and firing decisions.
Mary Towers, employment rights policy officer at Britain's Trades Union Congress, cited the importance of unions "having statutory consultation rights, having the ability to collectively bargain around technology at work".
That is just one of several factors that will help determine how AI shapes our economic lives - from antitrust policies that ensure healthy competition among AI suppliers through to re-training of workforces.
An OECD survey of some 5,300 workers published in July suggested that AI could benefit job satisfaction, health and wages but was also seen posing risks around privacy, reinforcing workplace biases and pushing people to overwork.
"The question is: will AI exacerbate existing inequalities or could it actually help us get back to something much fairer?"
To read the full article, click the link below.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/will-ai-be-an-economic-blessing-or-curse-history-offers-clues-2023-08-07/
Artificial Intelligence – AI – is currently hailed as one of the most revolutionizing technologies ever developed. It holds great promise for fostering business development, automating manufacturing processes, and delivering valuable insights among many more advantages. This will inevitably lead to people losing jobs and even create “extinct” professions. But how serious might this actually be?
AI image-generating technologies such as Dall-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, along with ChatGPT that are able to provide data and participate in discussions are among those most talked about but AI can be used for much much more.
There is a significant and inevitable change underway and this hypothesis is backed by numerous studies, including those carried out by the McKinsey Global Institute and Oxford University. This change concerns many people who believe that AI might take over their jobs.
AI is becoming increasingly used in a wide range of industries including logistics, manufacturing, and cybersecurity which means that the likelihood of certain jobs transferring from human operations to artificial intelligence are rather high.
Here are some of the jobs that may become obsolete due to the AI evolution:
Many factories have been using robotics in their assembly lines for the past 60 years with this continuing to evolve and now some assembly lines are already 100% automated. Moreover, while robotics are used to perform a set of repetitive tasks such as adjusting bolts or moving massive objects, AI is also used to make decisions in certain situations. It can identify problems and act to resolve these, for instance when a tool breaks down or there is an unexpected problem.
One area of the economy that has expanded in tandem with the steady rise in online shopping is package delivery and there is therefore no doubt that companies are investing in its automation.
AI can quickly calculate the best routes from a facility to delivery locations and human drivers also use tools such as Google Maps to deliver goods. Companies are now looking for ways to operate even without the involvement of human drivers.
Many websites have a helpful pop-up that asks whether the user needs any assistance. While these bots can promptly resolve simple issues, in order to solve more complex problems, the user still needs to contact a human.
However, in the near future, AI will enable an increasing number of these discussions to take place without the involvement of any human beings. Today, chatbots are set up to recognize particular phrases and offer a limited number of solutions based on keywords in the user’s question but eventually AI will be able to understand what the user wants and respond to virtually any question in a way that is similar to a human response. People working in the customer service industry will therefore no longer be needed.
The conversation between two AIs
Using ChatGPT (which understands English perfectly), one user has managed to simulate the dialogue between two AI entities. This shows that in the future AIs could replace humans, for instance in the service industry.
The popularity of computerized self-checkout alternatives has made it evident that cash register assistants are in danger. For instance, Amazon Fresh for grocery delivery is the most recent example of how the ever-expanding reach of internet-based commerce threatens the need for a profession that once provided employment for tens of thousands of people.
Also known as typists, these are data input specialists who use word processing software to create texts. Their work entails typing up written content that they did not create themselves.
Today, along with the tech giants like Google with its Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, small businesses have also shown rapid progress in creating voice recognition software for mobile devices. These programs are constantly evolving and are already demonstrating that you can say virtually anything and the app will not miss a single letter when writing the words spoken.
What is voice recognition software?
This is an application that uses speech recognition algorithms to detect spoken words (it can be in various languages) and turn the sound into text.
Source: https://www.developmentaid.org/news-stream/post/156307/5-jobs-that-artificial-intelligence-could-soon-replace
September 18, 2023
The Kingdom of Spain announced the increase of the Next-Tech public-private VC Fund to a total budget of 8 billion euros to invest in AI and deep tech-driven startups and scaleup projects; the deployment of a Programme for Green AI and AI for Green with a budget of 300 million euros; the establishment of an National Agency on AI; support of international efforts for global AI governance; and an agreement with the Bank of Development of Latin America to launch a specific Green and Digital Cooperation Fund for Latin America of 300 million euros.
To read the full White Papper, click the link below: