A conference was held this week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where industry leaders and academic experts discussed predictions and studies about artificial intelligence and its impact on work in the future. An executive at an insurance company shared information about an AI customer service bot that handles 150,000 calls each month.
The founder of Frontline, David Fanning, provided input in light of his recent documentary about AI. He said that people are frightened about the looming threat of AI that are taking an increasing number of jobs. He also took part in a symposium about the consequences that AI could have on the economy that was given by the Task Force on the Work of the Future that was hosted by MIT.
The director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Daniela Rus, provided findings from a study that showed 45 percent of all jobs could currently be performed by automated technologies. McKinsey calculated that this would amount to roughly $2 trillion in wages.
Fred Goff, CEO of Jobcase Inc., pointed out that automation has been a threat for much longer than technology leaders seem to realize or acknowledge. He mentioned jobs that have been displaced in his home towns of Toledo and Detroit by automation, and he revealed that the level of anxiety has always been high compared to the levels that are only beginning to increase in coastal cities of the United States.
Goff also gave his opinion about re-skilling the workers who become displaced by automation. He does not believe that more people will need to be trained in technology trades. He believes that many other industries, including sales, could be better pivot points for these people.
A documentarian named Krishna Andavolu from Vice Media responded to Goff by saying that retraining displaced workers is not such an easy undertaking. He pointed out that the panelists, who were leaders in their fields, were much more motivated and passionate than the average person who doesn’t necessarily have the drive to start a new career from scratch. By telling a person to prepare for a complete career shift, you are asking them to work twice as hard for the same pay because they will be retraining while maintaining their current job. He also pointed out that jobs for males are more in danger because these manual labor jobs are more likely to become automated than female-oriented jobs in service and medical industries.
Sarita Gupta of the Future of Work Program pointed out that the pay rate of low and middle-income jobs has been on a steady decline for more than 30 years. Technology works wonders for scaling up a business, but it also scales up the economic problems faced by the average working person.
Dil Bole Oberoi
