The PwC, the second largest professional services network, estimates that 30% of jobs can be replaced by automated AI entirely.
The earliest mention of any Artificial Intelligence was in the late 1930s, where new research in neurology revealed that our brains operated on electrical impulses just like a computer. Thus, it was thought that it was possible to create an artificial brain using computer.
Mathematician and Computer Scientist Alan Tuning, one of the major academics working in the field, released a paper in 1950 completely turning the already confusing and advanced field on its head.
This paper outlined one of the most obvious, yet hardest to understand, problems with AI. It outlined the problem of consciousness. It basically boils down to not being able to understand if a computer is truly thinking for itself or doing a very, very complex imitation of thinking.
This brings up my first argument against AI, there is no moral way to use it until we have a way to understand what makes consciousness. I will agree now AI is definitely not conscious, but how blurred will the line get 10, 20, even 50 years in the future. Most people’s initial thought, however, is consciousness is inherently biological, but again we have no understanding what so ever of what makes consciousness.
Now AI is much bigger than any academic, even 20 years ago, could’ve ever imagined. 77% of all companies already use, or plan to use AI, in some way to help with productivity and, like I said at the beginning, 30% of jobs globally can be entirely replaced by AI. These are obviously very scary statistics, but they are just estimates. However, even putting the number very conservatively at 10% that is still 333 million jobs. Considering the jobs would most likely be in all similar fields, if you were working in one of these fields there is just no logical reason for anyone to hire you. The one possible solution to this problem is the AI itself creating more jobs. There will need to be people to upkeep the machines. While this does sound good, all it will do is create more class disparity. The only jobs it will create is skilled work completely leaving people who aren’t in the right circumstances to get an education jobless and making social mobility nearly impossible.
AI is only going to get better and better and thus the problems I laid out are only going to get worse and worse. We must be more careful with AI and truly try our best to think of the ramifications of every advancement we make with it. We must all be brave enough to not only think about how it helps us, but how it will inevitably hurts others.