Are the Robots Coming for your job?
Today I want to discuss the good, bad and the ugly of robots or AI taking over jobs in the next decade.
So, it’s been estimated that 400-800 million jobs will be replaced by AI by 2030. And for a historical perspective we have seen this fear aspect before like in the 1980’s with people worried about computers taking their jobs. I want to point out that technology in the past almost always created more jobs than eliminated jobs, but this time is different in my opinion. We’ve seen so far that humans are usually smarter than machines when it comes to complex tasks, but that could be changing fast. We’ve already seen AI products such as ChatGPB and its capabilities.
So, let’s start out with the good of AI
The Good
The good from this might be that AI might allow people to pursue careers that are more fulfilling. There’s lots of low skill jobs that young workers don’t want. For instance, people in service jobs, like the fry guy, might be given managerial duties instead of just sitting in front of the deep fryer all day.
Now, I should also point out that AI has already helped in the field of medicine a lot and we should expect this to continue to happen.
I personally believe that AI will give us more leisure time and that’s a positive. The average hours of work have continued to decline with more and more technological advances. We’re already seeing this happen too, with pushes for 4-day work weeks in the United States.
The bad
To begin, a bad characteristic of this technology is that it grows exponentially and not linearly. So, we can expect as AI comes, it will get more sophisticated, and we’ll lose more and more control. Now I’m def not smart enough to know whether we could have a terminator like situation on our hands with AI becoming self-aware, but I do believe we will need to “Decentralize” AI. This means that not all robots should be manufactured from the same factory. Also, they shouldn’t be linked or able to communicate with another, unless the other robot is working on the same task. For example, all the robots at a fast food restaurant could be synced, but we wouldn’t want all the robots in town to be synced.
Again, this seems very farfetched now, but with advances in technology there’s no telling how out of control it might get.
The Ugly:
That to me, is that it’s not clear what type of jobs will be eliminated. I tend to think that face to face type jobs are more secure but is that really the case? Take for example a surgeon, most people would definitely not use a robot for a surgery but in ten years or so it could be the norm. Now take for example, a pilot, this is another high skilled job that might be replaced too. And we’re already starting to see self-driving trucks right now too.
So, after thinking about it, I personally believe that jobs that require creativity are probably best off.
Now I’ve heard that it’s definitely possible for 99 percent of jobs to be eliminated with the upcoming ai.
Right now, machines do physical tasks better than us, but they don’t do creative tasks as well.
Now another thing I think is scary is that we could become too dependent on the machines. And there’s proof of this already. Many people don’t know how to fix everyday things around the house, plant a garden, and sadly navigate without a GPS. If we become too dependent on the robots, then this makes us vulnerable.
Thanks for your time.
