Will artificial intelligence lead to job displacements (GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Context:
AI is the digital distillation of a technological revolution that is facilitating the long-overdue evolution of the human mind.
AI, as fear-inducing as anything disruptive and new is, can galvanise, turbo-charge, and trigger new avenues of intelligence in human minds. These new avenues can enable users to understand and attack society’s greatest challenges today.
AGI & ANI:
AI can traditionally be divided into AGI and ANI. Theorists and AI experts call this Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI).
AGI is designed to be capable of performing a wide variety of intellectual tasks, while ANI is designed to perform a single or a narrow set of related tasks.
AGI is designed to be flexible and adaptable, capable of handling new tasks and situations without human intervention. This which is often referred to as ‘unsupervised learning’ which means that the AI system can learn from data without being explicitly programmed to do so.
Scope & Abilities:
The difference between AGI and ANI lies in their scope of intelligence and their ability to generalise knowledge across different contexts.
AGI is primarily driven by a variety of technical aspects that bear deeper discussion. One such aspect is the sophistication of AGI’s cognitive architecture, the development of a system that includes perception, attention, memory, language, and reasoning.
AGI is envisioned as having the ability to perform any intellectual task that a human can do, and to apply knowledge learned in one context to new, unfamiliar situations.
AGI is the antagonist in pop-culture movies and lore where computers ‘take over’ civilisation and enslave humans. The fear emanates from the very real possibility that an AGI system continues to learn and make decisions that even its creators cannot possibly predict. This lack of ‘control’ is what leads to the overarching fear of AI.
ANI, by contrast, is designed to perform a specific task or set of tasks and is not capable of generalising knowledge or skills to new situations outside of its programmed domain. Hence, it remains eminently controllable even if we do not fully understand the mechanics of how it gets so good at the task it is programmed for.
Explainability:
AGI systems will need to be easily explainable to humans in their decision-making processes. AGI, in its pure form, will be designed to learn and reason like humans. This means that it should pull knowledge and inputs from experience, reason about complex concepts, and make decisions based on incomplete or uncertain information.
In contrast, ANI is typically trained using machine learning algorithms such as supervised learning, unsupervised learning, or reinforcement learning. These algorithms are designed to optimise the AI system’s performance on a specific task or set of tasks, but they are not necessarily capable of reasoning or learning in the way that humans do.
While, AGI is still largely in the realm of theoretical research and development, and it is not yet clear whether it will be possible to create a truly general AI system.
In contrast, ANI is already in widespread use in a variety of industries and applications. including image recognition, natural language processing, and predictive analysis.
The future of jobs:
ANI products like ChatGPT have existed for some time now but have recently taken the world by storm. Besides its technological prowess, it is also a matter of right place and right time.
Other revolutionary technologies such as Q–Chat, Dall E-2, Synthesia are also on the rise to promote art and academia through fun and adaptive chat experiences.
ChatGPT is a chat bot, which allows users to engage in a conversation about a variety of topics to which it like personal hobbies, interests, or current events and generates human-like responses in text form.
ChatGPT, and similar solutions, are particularly adept at automating routine and repetitive tasks, such as data entry and customer service which could perhaps replace low-skill level workers.
Many experts believe that AI will transform industries in significant ways, creating new opportunities for growth and innovation. In industries like healthcare, for example, AI can optimise transportation networks, develop new materials, and even simplify manufacturing processes.
Conclusion:
It can be safely assumed that AI can very well can lead to the displacement of some jobs. Buzz feed layoffs were almost at the same time during its new deal with OpenAI to leverage ChatGPT for its articles. Many more industry veterans are on the cusp of an internal upheaval. However, disruptive tech also creates new jobs and skill sets.
AI may create demand for workers with expertise in machine learning, data science and natural language processing and project management. It may also create opportunities for workers to specialise in areas where human judgement and creativity will remain critical.
The impact of AI on jobs and industries is likely to be uneven, with some workers and industries experiencing greater disruption than others. But this can be said for nearly every disruptive technology that was introduced in legacy business sectors. The printing press and the telephone created vastly more opportunities in the long term.
In the case of AI, workers in low-wage and low-skill occupations may be more vulnerable to job loss than those in high-wage and high-skill occupations. But all is not lost.
Way Forward:
As AI continues to transform the job market, workers may need to acquire new skills and knowledge in order to remain employable. This could require significant investment in education and training programs, as well as new approaches to lifelong learning and skills development.
Overall, while there is still much uncertainty about the impact of AI on jobsand industries, it is evident that the technology is likely to have significant implications on the future of work.
It will be important for policymakers, businesses, and workers to take proactive steps to manage this transition and ensure that the benefits of AI are shared widely across society.
