The Future of Work and AI

We experience consistently high profile individuals sounding alarm bells, on the impact of AI on jobs. Renowned psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, which is best known for his book, Thinking fast and Slow, explained why he thinks AI will be wiser than humans.

Elon Musk and Daniel Kahneman are both confident about AI potential and simultaneously worried about the implications of unleashing on the world.

Is this the end of Jobs ?

We have heard these claims before, but while this has loomed since the Luddites destroyed the textile frames centuries ago, unemployment rates have been remarkably low.

From an economics lens, we can take comfort in the fact that farming jobs started to disappear over one hundred years ago, without corresponding long term mass unemployment. But when software has the ability to do new tasks more cheaply, economists see it as similar to opening up trade with an organisation. In other words if you favour free trade between countries, then you will favour free trade between organisations.

By adopting technologies like AI, or supporting the adoption of AI, we show that other jobs will appear, and overall employment will not plummet. Human and AI's will likely work together. Humans will provide compliments to prediction, namely data, Judgement or action. For example as prediction becomes cheaper, the value of judgment rises.We therefore anticipate growth in the number of jobs that involve reward function engineering.

Many of today's highest paid-careers have prediction as a core skill, including those of doctors, financial analysts, and lawyers. Just as AI predictions of directions increased, this potential created a new industry in the number of paid uber drivers introduced into society, we expect to see the same phenomenon in medicine and finance.

We see many reasons that the productive use of AI will require additional skills. For example the reward function engineer must understand both the objectives of the organisation and the capabilities of the machines.

Companies are at times terrified they will fall behind there competition in securing and using AI. More customers mean more data, more data means better AI predictions, better predictions mean more customers and the cycle continues. Under the right conditions once a company's AI leads in performance, it leads it competitors, like we seen in Google search and Amazon predictive shipping experiment and Facebook has ruled social media.

I have taken this quote from Bill Gates vision into the future

"My selections include amazing new tools that will one day save lives, from simple blood tests that predict premature birth to toilets that destroy deadly pathogens. I’m equally excited by how other technologies on the list will improve our lives. Wearable health monitors like the wrist-based ECG will warn heart patients of impending problems, while others let diabetics not only track glucose levels but manage their disease. Advanced nuclear reactors could provide carbon-free, safe, secure energy to the world.

One of my choices even offers us a peek at a future where society’s primary goal is personal fulfillment. Among many other applications, AI-driven personal agents might one day make your e-mail in-box more manageable—something that sounds trivial until you consider what possibilities open up when you have more free time.

The 30 minutes you used to spend reading e-mail could be spent doing other things. I know some people would use that time to get more work done—but I hope most would use it for pursuits like connecting with a friend over coffee, helping your child with homework, or even volunteering in your community.

That, I think, is a future worth working toward."

AI is here today and mature, do take advantage of it and innovate.