AI won’t steal your job, people leveraging AI will

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The workplace keeps evolving at the pace of technology and workers have to learn leveraging the new opportunities offered by tech advances to remain competitive. Image credit: Stephanie Arnett/MITTR

 

Just yesterday I commented on the ban to ChatGPT imposed in Italy by the Authority under the banner of preserving privacy and fighting potential misinformation.

 

As follow up I read a number of articles and commentaries on various international magazines, that have my trust, and one message emerged:

   

It is not AI that will end up stealing your job,

 

it will be stolen by people that have learnt to use AI to become more productive

 

Goldman Sachs  foresees up to 300 million jobs to be affected by AI worldwide (that is 18% of jobs). The new capabilities offered by Generative AI will particularly affect white collars job, but “affect” does not mean “kill”.

 

Sure, a percentage of those affected jobs will lead to job losses but the majority will be changed by AI, not killed. And those that will be killed could be offset by new jobs opportunities. Let’s be clear and not fool ourselves. The new jobs opportunities may  not be fit for those losing their job. New skills and competences will be needed. Continuous education is the keyword for the future.

 

The Goldman Sachs report foresees a growth of 7% of the world GDP as follow up of the widespread adoption of AI, meaning some 7 trillion $ over the next 10 years.

 

I  have spent part of my working  life acting as ghost writer for several of my big bosses (and enjoyed it), both writing articles , speeches and preparing presentation. That  involved a bit of creativity, a good deal of searching data and information and then putting  it all together. Today, with the tools that have became available, I would be much more efficient and do a better job. I  am pretty sure these tools will not have me fired, the bosses will still ask me to prepare their stuff.

 

A nice article is just out on MIT  Technology Review discussing how ChatGTP can revolutionise the economy. This is not necessarily a sure things in fostering economic development BUT, as stated in the article, this is not a ChatGTP responsibility, it is OUR responsibility to use it in ways that foster economic progress. Putting our head under the sand or blocking the evolution is surely not going to help.

 

For sure, steering the evolution and application of technology in a way that is fair to all is challenging. The past decades have shown that the benefits of technology are unevenly distributed, with some rich becoming super-rich with a good portion of the people lagging behind. However, it is also fair to say that the average well being in the world has steadily  increased (measured in terms of decrease of extreme poverty, hunger, child labour, child mortality, increased leisure time, life expectancy …).  Even some sociometric measures of increased “happiness” based on language analyses (like use of specific words in social media…) are showing a steady improvements (with a decline through the pandemic).

 

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