Will Artificial Intelligence Bring More Jobs? Fewer? Maybe the Computers Will Tell Us.

The debates about AI and the future of jobs are complex and could play out very differently than we expect. We should be watching closely, but we should appreciate that one option is for AI to risk many fewer jobs than other major economic trends threaten to disrupt. We really don't know.

As the world economy changes and as consumer tastes and business needs shift, major disruptions take place and the market demands new skills. The U.S. population is aging, and the demand for skilled nursing and medical care will increase. Many manufacturing jobs are long gone do to factory automation and cheaper labor abroad, without the most sophisticated AI involved. Steam engines and affordable cars eliminated entire sectors but launched new areas of employment.

The worst could happen. We could see a world where data and technology replace entire classes of employment - so we better be paying close attention, investing in the job skills and education sectors that are anticipated to grow. No matter what ends of happening, the skills needed for future employment are changing. I would like to see as much national debate about how we compete with China for the millions of AI related jobs that seem to be on the horizon, rather than what seems to be a primary focus only on areas like coal mining and steel.

I was once a local state legislator in Brooklyn, NY, representing Brighton Beach, Coney Island, and Bay Ridge, neighborhoods with a very high percentage of senior citizens. I remember the concerns my older constituents had when bank pass books were eliminated and when ATMs were installed. The seniors were accustomed to waiting on line (not online, but a physical queue) every month at the bank to get their savings books stamped with their bank balance. There were nearly riots when that was eliminated - what if your money vanished, how could you be sure of your balance without your book stamped? My constituents were frightened and angry about the changes and they flooded my office looking for help.

And then ATMs arrived - yikes, the tellers would all be fired. And that hasn't happened and bank employment is strong.

"An interesting example is the introduction of ATMs in the 1970s, which transformed banking from an industry with highly limited customer access to one that operated 24/7. At the same time, levels of teller employment in the U.S. remained stable for decades. The effects on employment of automation because of AI are likely to be particularly complex, because AI holds the potential of automating roles that are themselves more complex than with previous technologies." Daniel Huttenlocher is the founding dean and vice provost of  Cornell Tech, writing in TechCrunch.

So let's pay attention to the changes coming, but I don't think it's time to plan for a universal basic income just yet.

Consider self-driving cars? Will they result in a loss of millions of jobs? Or will self-driving, plus Uber/Lyft, ride sharing, cars on demand and all the other options emerging mean that most of us won't own cars, because transportation will be available on demand in many new ways - and we will see a net of more drivers/managers of vehicles? Who knows? Most of the under age 40 staff in my office do not own cars and have no plans to purchase one anytime soon. My 16 year old son is taking drivers ed right now, but it's a ho hum experience for him, even in our suburban neighborhood. When I was his age, getting a license and a car was one of the most important things in my life! Today, he and my staff use a range of options for transportation, and although more may be automated, they use many new options that require more humans than owning a driver a car they own.

I do know one job area that will see growth - privacy and security professionals to deal with the ethical and legal challenges of all the new data needed to power the AI. My job isn't going away anytime soon. They can't automate that....not yet.

*typed by a human, assisted but not replaced by technology. (But, you can't be sure, can you?)

Jules Polonetsky is CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a non-profit organization that serves as a catalyst for privacy leadership and scholarship, advancing principled data practices in support of emerging technologies. FPF is participating in the work of the Partnership on AI, as many leading AI researchers and civil society groups seek to work through these challenges.