An aspiring dentist, I wanted to know if my career would still be viable further down the road or if the profession would become obsolete due to advancing technology. A quick Google search indicated that “Our visitors have voted that there is a small chance this occupation will be replaced.” [1] Feeling somewhat assured, the irony of the situation struck me soon afterwards: I had just asked a machine if a machine would replace my job.
Triviality aside, the idea of replacing menial work with machines may excite business leaders. Employees also see it as a way to help them manage their workload. On the other side, employees also fear that AI threatens their job security—a Microsoft survey revealed that 49% of employees fear AI stealing their jobs [2]. To take it a step further, some are concerned that AI won’t just replace jobs, it will threaten humanity. Even the godfather of AI, George Hinton, has expressed concern about the potential of the technology [3]. Such threats have induced calls for a pause to AI development. As a human, not a computer, I admit to planning for my future with technological development in mind. Though AI should force us to adapt and maybe change our plans, the fear regarding its development is exaggerated.
Admittedly, the technology can be stunning, as anyone who has seen ChatGPT can attest to. But its novelty seems to conceal AI’s recent shortcomings. Consider one form of artificial intelligence: self-driving cars. In 2014, Elon Musk claimed that a car capable of driving itself 90% of the time would probably be available in 2015 [4]. Just three months ago, he predicted that Tesla would have a Chat-GPT moment, in which self-driving cars would explode in the next year or two with three million cars driving themselves [5]. As of February 2022, $200 billion had been invested in self-driving technology worldwide [6]. The development of self-driving cars has proven difficult, given the number of different situations an autonomous vehicle could confront [7]. Nine years after Musk’s original prediction, autonomous vehicles haven’t made a dent in the car industry. If a robot still can’t drive a car, do we really expect it to overcome humanity anytime soon?
Even if robots don’t take over the world, they could still threaten jobs. New technology could very well change the job landscape, but that is something we have seen before. Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard University, stated, “Since the dawn of the industrial age, a recurrent fear has been that technological change will spawn mass unemployment. Neoclassical economists predicted that this would not happen, because people would find other jobs, albeit possibly after a long period of painful adjustment. By and large, that prediction has proven to be correct.” [8] In other words, with the development of new technology, we have found new ways to work. Such adaptation can be facilitated by slow application, which appears to be the case with artificial intelligence. A recent article from The Economist predicted that the “road to widespread (AI) diffusion, and any resulting productivity boom, will be a long one.” A third of small businesses have no plans to implement AI in the next year, and around 70 S&P 500 companies have not interest in AI [9]. While slow productivity growth is disappointing, a long diffusion period opens the opportunity for job adaptation. Fortunately, our government has not inserted itself into the job adaptation question. So far, efforts are appropriately focused on protection by way of transparency and prevention of discrimination rather than protection from job loss [10]. The White House’s “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” doesn’t make a single mention of jobs [11]. This omission is suitable, especially because we don't know how jobs will adapt and how quickly. Rapid implementation of AI would justify an individual’s or a government’s fear of AI, but so far, the sensational changes seem to be underwhelming.
Admittedly, just as Rogoff suggested, there will be pain in technological development. Workers may not want to adapt to keep working. James Suzman, author of Work [12], predicts that income inequality will be exacerbated. In my mind, one of the worst outcomes from the development of AI would be to antiquate human creativity. While AI may yield a creative product that is just as good, the value is in the journey. Consider writing, a process that requires organization thinking and synthesize of ideas, thinking that doesn’t happen if a machine does it for you. These are real risks, but at risk of being too trite, the simple cliché “no pain, no gain” aptly describes this step of technological progress.of
Early on, the AI narrative was dominated by a dichotomy between fear and excitement. Fortunately, a more conservative narrative has emerged: AI still needs human revision, and new technology is difficult to implement. We would be wise to remember the limitations of new technologies and to be skeptical of outlandish predictions regarding the implementation of AI. As I’ve witnessed other people behold the marvel of ChatGPT, admiration has been directed towards the machine. While watching a chatbot spit out coherent, creative English is breathtaking, the real miracle is that humans were able to create such a machine. Whatever the future holds for AI, let’s remember that any technological progress truly is a mark of human progress rather than a precursor to human extinction.
