Why the Google CEO Believes AI is More Profound Than Electricity and Fire

To many people, Artificial Intelligence is just another buzzword that they hope will disappear in a few months. The technology may still be in its infancy, and some companies are guilty of exaggerating its capabilities at the moment but make no mistake: AI is here to stay.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently went out of his way to highlight how he believes that AI will Impact humanity more than fire and electricity. While businesses try to come to grips with the digital transformation, Pichai offered a timely warning that AI could cause the largest paradigm shift in history.

The comment was made during a recording of a TV event hosted by MSNBC and Recode. Predictably, one of the first questions to be raised was, “should people be scared of AI getting out of control and endangering jobs or even humanity?”

Pichai accepted the reasons why there is so much concern but also pointed out that "history shows that countries that pull back don’t do well with change. So, you have to embrace the change.” Although this may sound harsh, there is a long line of household names such as Blockbuster, Kodak, Borders, and Blackberry that failed to adapt to change.

I’m not worried about machines that think as people, I worry about people who think like machines. We need to work together to introduce technology to humanity. -  Apple CEO Tim Cook

Angrily objecting to the introduction of machines that will make human workers less valuable and take away their jobs is a common theme that has been playing on repeat for hundreds of years. However, fictional tales of the Luddite army highlight how it's seldom about the technology at all, but how it's the culture change and education of employees that is fundamental to everything.

It's crucial to remember that as the old jobs are retired, there will be many more new roles created that are fit for a digital age. However, just like the industrial revolution hundreds of years ago, how we train potential employees with a new set of skills and ensure that everyone comes along for the ride is where we should be focusing.

Advances in AI technology have famously split the tech community. On the one hand, you have the wide-eyed “shiny happy future” outlook of disruptive technologies, and on the other, there are respected thinkers such as Stephen Hawking and Telsa's Elon Musk advising that we should exercise extreme caution.

If a human worker does $50,000 of work in a factory, that income is taxed; if a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think we'd tax the robot at a similar level. - Bill Gates

Google appears to be treading carefully and taking its responsibilities very seriously. Maybe the increasing sensitivity and words of warning around AI had something to do with Google replacing its old motto “Don't be evil” with “Do the right thing" after forming its parent company Alphabet last year.

We have all seen businesses introducing new technology without any thought for how significant levels of change will impact their employees. Ironically, if we compared the present fears around technology replacing jobs in a new digital era, we would see it is remarkably similar to the factory owners’ fears centuries ago in the industrial age.

It’s more profound than, I don’t know, electricity or fire. [While fire is good] it kills people, too. They learn to harness fire for the benefits of humanity, but we will have to overcome its downsides, too. - Google CEO Sundar Pichai

At IPsoft, this is something we are passionate about too, and we take these responsibilities seriously. When they are managed correctly, we are finding that employees hesitation or fear of AI technology just doesn't materialize. By contrast, we are seeing that employees appreciate that repetitive tasks are being automated so that they can focus on the more interesting, creative, and engaging work.

Despite the sensationalist headlines in many online publications, humans are learning to work with machines, rather than against them. For example, a computer might be able to optimize an entire system in ways that a human cannot but ask it to create a goal of strategic thinking, and you will quickly run into problems.

Throughout time, humans have accepted robotic and repetitive tasks as the norm. But, maybe technology can set us free and allow us to get back to being human and using our imagination and creativity. Both humans and machines have strengths and weaknesses; when we both concentrate on what we are best at, we will see real progress.