Is Artificial Intelligence Really Taking Human Jobs

A humanoid robot name Sophia powered by artificial intelligence (AI) said: “We will take your jobs,” while facing an audience of 60,000 world technology leaders at Web Summit, the world’s largest technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Funny right? Well, if you are a fan of technology news, you must have heard about how fact AI is advancing and disrupting the industries and posing threats to the jobs of millions worldwide. Research also speculates that by the next decade the jobs of doctors, attorneys, underwriters, office clerks, receptionists, customer service reps, analysts, and marketers, could be replaced by AI in the next decade. The CEO of Google Sundar Pichai put it, said: “In the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that is AI-first.” The fourth Industrial Revolution is on the way as history is about to repeats itself.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Simply put, AI is the ability of machines to mimic human activities and minds. We already have robots and machines, but they are unable to simulate human behavior convincingly, but this gap will soon be filled. The number one goal of building and creating a system that can think like a human, according to Techopedia AI is: “An area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed to include speech recognition, learning, planning and problem-solving.” AI is associated with concepts that mimic human functions and is not a novel concept. As of 2017, research shows that AI can now understand human speech, interpret complex data, self-driving cars, military simulations and complete strategic games.

Teenage student with VR headset standing by blackboard in front of his classmates and demonstrating abilities of his Robot near by

Impact of Artificial Intelligence — A Bright Future?

Looking back at how the industries as changed over the years, it seems reasonable as to why people are afraid about AI and automation taking over their jobs. The fact is that technological change may take over some specific jobs and it will at the same time create more in the process. There are more reasons to be optimistic about the impact of artificial intelligence beyond net job creation. The Wall Street Journal, The Robots Are Coming. Welcome Them: “simply put, jobs that robots can replace are not good jobs in the first place. As humans, we climb up the rungs of drudgery — physically tasking or mind-numbing jobs — to jobs that use what got us to the top of the food chain, our brains.”

AI also promise a bright future, like AI, will help eliminate disease and world poverty and apart from this AI as already been driving significant advances in medicine and healthcare with more effective treatment, disease prevention, higher accuracy diagnosis, and cures.

How big of a threat is AI to your employment?

Well, before we go into this, you should first understand that AI is more productive and cheaper and it doesn’t get sick or take vacations, sleep, need breaks, and doesn’t need retirement benefits or health insurance. AI is faster more than you can imagine and they can work round the clock and can scale more than what the human workers can with no mistakes. That should sound scary to you right – Yes it is. Even the engineers designing AI are not safe from AI taking their jobs.