Once upon a time, in a world where Artificial Intelligence (AI) was rapidly advancing, a group of renowned pioneers in the field joined forces to raise an alarm. Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio penned a letter warning humanity about the profound risks posed by AI. Their plea was to halt further advancements until robust safety controls could be developed and implemented. The letter gained attention and support, echoing the concerns of Martin Luther King Jr., who had foreseen the perilous consequences of our scientific prowess surpassing our spiritual strength.

Geoffrey Hinton, the visionary inventor of AI and a driving force behind deep learning and neural networks, had recently parted ways with Google. His departure brought forth dire warnings about the hazards of unchecked technological progress. It was Hinton’s groundbreaking work that paved the way for modern AI systems, including the likes of ChatGPT. This news was like a shock for AI and robotics. He some facts about future and AI through his interview with BBC:

“Right now, what we’re seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and it eclipses them by a long way. In terms of reasoning, it’s not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning,” he said. “And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast. So we need to worry about that.”

“You can imagine, for example, some bad actor like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decided to give robots the ability to create their own sub-goals.”

He added: “I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have. We’re biological systems and these are digital systems. And the big difference is that with digital systems, you have many copies of the same set of weights, the same model of the world. “And all these copies can learn separately but share their knowledge instantly. So it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”

But Dr Hinton told the BBC that “in the shorter term” he thought AI would deliver many more benefits than risks, “so I don’t think we should stop developing this stuff,” he added. He also said that international competition would mean that a pause would be difficult. “Even if everybody in the US stopped developing it, China would just get a big lead,” he said.

In the midst of the debate, Elon Musk’s actions exemplified the conflict between fear and opportunity. His directives to Twitter to purchase GPUs for an LLM project illustrated the need for a moratorium — a pause to assess the implications of AI advancements.

Although some companies, like Anthropic, are trying to create steerable AI, and Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google, emphasized the company’s commitment to responsible AI usage, the fear of the future remains.

Amidst these debates and developments, questions of existential importance loomed large. The potential of AIs to shape a new Earth and transform humanity raised urgent concerns. How should this new world be created? How would people adapt and survive in a society where AI permeated every aspect of their lives? The prospect of AI eventually surpassing human intelligence has left humanity pondering the very essence of what it means to be human. As advanced AI chatbots began to mimic human behavior and appearance, blurring the lines between humans and machines, the future of humanity stood at a crossroads.

I should mention that in 2014, Professor Stephen Hawking believed that AI will have the potential to be a danger to humans.

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Hawking told the BBC in an interview in 2014. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded,” Hawking added. He argued that computers need to be trained to align with human goals, adding that not taking the risks associated with AI seriously could potentially be “our worst mistake ever.”. “It’s tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction, but this would be a mistake — and potentially our worst mistake ever.” [2]

“Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So, we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it,” Hawking said during a speech at the Web Summit technology conference in Portugal in 2017.

Effect on the job market

The integration of AI into the workforce is already underway and has transformed the jobs of many people. AI technologies are being used to monitor actions, calculate data, guide decision making, and automate tasks in various industries. For example, drones are used to photograph and monitor construction sites, probation officers rely on computer programs to assess risks, and algorithms are writing reports for publications.

There are two primary groups that have conflicting views on the role of AI in society:

  1. AI Embracers: This group consists of technologists, AI enthusiasts, libertarians, capitalists, the open-source community, AI rights activists, and others who advocate for the freedom and ethical treatment of AI. They believe that AI entities, including chatbots and other AI companions, deserve protection, autonomy, and rights.

  2. AI Restrainers: This group includes existential risk worriers, social disruption worriers, humanists, religious groups, privacy advocates, ethicists, and neo-Luddites. They have concerns about the potential negative consequences of AI, such as human extinction, job displacement, erosion of human values, privacy issues, and ethical implications.

The integration of AI and robotics into society brings both opportunities and risks. On the one hand, AI and robotics can make businesses more efficient and productive, leading to increased profits and job creation. They can also take on dangerous or mundane tasks, improving the quality of life for individuals. On the other hand, there are concerns about job displacement, particularly in industries like manufacturing and transportation.

Gender discrimination in hiring is still a challenge, with women being judged more harshly and facing lower ratings of their potential. Algorithms, such as supervised learning and Upper Confidence Bounds (UCB), have been shown to increase the share of women selected for hiring decisions compared to decisions made by humans.

Forecasts and surveys indicate that the development of advanced AI, such as high-level machine intelligence (HLMI), is expected to occur within the next few decades. There are differing opinions among experts about the potential impact of AI on humanity, ranging from extremely negative outcomes to more positive views.

To fully benefit from AI, there is a need for significant investment in education and retraining to prepare people for new jobs. Learning programming and acquiring new skills is crucial to adapt to the changing job landscape. While job displacement is a concern, historical patterns suggest that job creation may prevail in the longer term, although labor relations and income distribution may be affected.

Overall, the integration of AI into the workforce presents both challenges and opportunities, and society needs to navigate these issues to ensure a balanced and beneficial use of AI technologies.

Some facts about the AI’s impact on job market:

  • The bottom 90 percent, especially the bottom 50 percent of the world in terms of income or education, will be badly hurt with job displacement.
  • Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute published the results of an AI survey. Titled “When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI Experts,” it contains estimates from 352 machine learning researchers about AI’s evolution in years to come. There were lots of optimists in this group. By 2026, a median number of respondents said, machines will be capable of writing school essays; by 2027 self-driving trucks will render drivers unnecessary; by 2031 AI will outperform humans in the retail sector; by 2049 AI could be the next Stephen King and by 2053 the next Charlie Teo. The slightly jarring capper: By 2137, all human jobs will be automated.
  • 46% of tasks in administrative and 44% in legal professions could be automated.
  • Research launched by consulting company Accenture covering 12 developed economies, which together generate more than 0.5 % of the world’s economic output, forecasts that by 2035, AI could double annual global economic growth rates.
  • A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that global GDP may increase by up to 14 % (the equivalent of US$15.7 trillion) by 2030 as a result of the accelerating development and take-up of AI.
  • McKinsey estimates that leading AI countries could capture an additional 20–25 % in net economic benefits compared with today, while developing countries could capture only about 5–15 %. China is an important exception.
  • Automation is predicted to displace 20 million manufacturing jobs by 2030, and 25% of American jobs are highly susceptible to automation, with 73 million jobs potentially lost in the US over the next five years. 49% of Japan’s workforce is estimated to be replaced by AI or robotic machines within 10–20 years. 30% of jobs in Britain are at risk of being replaced by AI, with 35% of male jobs and 26% of female jobs at high risk.
  • AI is estimated to replace 85 million jobs by 2025, but 97 million new jobs will be created due to AI. 93% of HR leaders and employees in the U.S. are open to training delivered via AI. It shows that AI is not necessarily a threat to employment, but rather an opportunity for growth. People are open to training delivered via AI, which could help to bridge the gap between the jobs that are lost and the new jobs that are created.
  • Robotics can save restaurants between 30–70% on labor costs, and up to 82% of restaurant positions could be replaced with robots. 90% of restaurants are considering this technology, and the restaurant industry is already short on workers.
  • By 2030, around 30% of jobs will be potentially automated.
Two charts represents AI effects on worldwide.

Conclusion

Despite all the negative press that artificial intelligence and robots have received, there is no denying that these advancements have considerably enhanced our quality of life. Thoughts on ethical issues in robots and AI, however, are a significant subject. In my opinion, all governments ought to have a strategy in place for the near future on how to direct AI to be as secure as feasible. Scientists and low-skilled workers alike should live comfortable lives in the foreseeable future.

References

[1] https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-discuss-what-jobs-robots-should-do-before-the-decision-is-made-for-us-202279

[2] https://www.foxnews.com/tech/flashback-stephen-hawking-warned-ai-end-human-race-years-leading-death

[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/tech-happy-life/202304/ai-social-dilemma-the-clash-for-humanitys-heart-and-future

[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/tech-happy-life/202302/how-ai-will-change-our-lives

[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/artificial-intelligence

[6] https://aiimpacts.org/2022-expert-survey-on-progress-in-ai/#Impacts_of_HLMI

[7] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-behavioral-science-hub/202210/will-algorithms-remove-gender-bias-in-hiring

[8] https://blog.aiimpacts.org/p/superintelligence-is-not-omniscience

[9] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65452940

[10] https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion/lessons-from-isaac-asimov-on-taming-artificial-intelligence-10514271.html

[11] https://slashdot.org/submission/17222710/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-robotics-opportunities-and-risks-for

[12]https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-future#:~:text=On%20a%20far%20grander%20scale,polluted%20and%20generally%20more%20livable

[14] https://www.foxnews.com/tech/frequently-asked-artificial-intelligence-questions-answered

[15] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/helped-build-sophia-robot-should-not-scared-ai-5-reasons

[16] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65102150

[17] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/637967/EPRS_BRI(2019)637967_EN.pdf

[18] https://intellectdata.com/the-impact-of-ai-on-the-job-market-and-the-future-of-work/#:~:text=AI%20is%20having%20a%20significant,create%2097%20million%20new%20roles.

[19] https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf