Will AI replace humans?
November 19, 2023
Artificial Intelligence is disrupting multiple industries, completely changing the way we live in work, and it might take YOUR JOB! Or is it?
World Economic Forum released a report in 2020 that 85 million jobs in 2025 are going to go, but it also mentioned that 97 million jobs are going to be created because of AI over the same period.
It will happen. But...
AI proved to be absolutely perfect for doing routine and mundane tasks and not so perfect for things that require intelligence, critical thinking, and creativity. It is not particularly good at replacing people for now. So naturally, it makes sense to start worrying whether your job is going to be taken by AI considering it can perform better and faster. Can work 24/7. Does not require insurance, sick leave, dental care, or even salary.
Obviously, those jobs that require human-to-human communication, empathy, critical thinking, and vast amounts of creativity are not going to go at any time, but those jobs that require lower skills are in trouble. When we say AI, the first thing that comes to mind is probably ChatGPT, and ChatGPT can do many things: it can create text, serve as the chatbot on a website imitate customer service representatives, etc. In the future, it will also be taking calls for you and answering more specific inquiries, which means that naturally, you would think that the customer server is going to go. Actually, it is not true. Well, yes, in the future customer service mostly will be taken care of by AI, but still, when you come to the website, open that chatbot in the bottom corner, and you ask the question. When that chatbot cannot answer something, the first thing you say is: “Can I talk to a human?”. Even though customer service is going to be taken by AI, there are still going to be people standing behind it, to whom AI is going to be answering.
Obviously, those jobs that require human-to-human communication, empathy, critical thinking, and vast amounts of creativity are not going to go at any time, but those jobs that require lower skills are in trouble. When we say AI, the first thing that comes to mind is probably ChatGPT, and ChatGPT can do many things: it can create text, serve as the chatbot on a website imitate customer service representatives, etc. In the future, it will also be taking calls for you and answering more specific inquiries, which means that naturally, you would think that the customer server is going to go. Actually, it is not true. Well, yes, in the future customer service mostly will be taken care of by AI, but still, when you come to the website, open that chatbot in the bottom corner, and you ask the question. When that chatbot cannot answer something, the first thing you say is: “Can I talk to a human?”. Even though customer service is going to be taken by AI, there are still going to be people standing behind it, to whom AI is going to be answering.
Yes, in the future especially it will be able to take on harder tasks. Tasks that AI can do without our input whatsoever - complete automation. But still, people are going to be there to control it. People are going to be there to use AI to their own advantage so that they in turn can do more work more effectively and more productively.
Wait, there is more
It is worth noting that artificial intelligence does not just mean ChatGPT. It does not just mean some programs on the internet, programs that can create videos, programs that generate images, or programs that create articles for your blog or whatever. ChatGPT is itself just a model that has been trained on lots of data, lots of information, and lots of text. And guess what: it can output your text. Well, now, of course, it has plugins, and the AI field has also progressed in the last year. There are thousands of AI tools that already make our work easier in many ways: from content creation to automation of tasks.
When you take a robot or some kind of mechanical structure and you put artificial intelligence in that, that thing completely becomes something else, which is a kind of threat to our employment and our job. If you've seen on the internet, there are a bunch of robots that have been created in the past few decades. There are robot bartenders, surgical robots, delivery drones, self-driving cars, humanoids, and different assistants. Even we have built our own robot assistant previously. We built a wheelbase that could easily move in any direction on mecanum wheels with a robotic arm on top. And we wanted to put artificial intelligence in there so that it is able to actually function on itself. We took the inspiration from the movie called “Iron Man”, where there was that arm and it was standing with a fire extinguisher and performing other tasks. That was our inspiration and we are still working on that.
That was our goal - to have an autonomous voice-powered assistant. A thing that can actually function on its own: it can go through the environment and scan the things it has to interact with. So when we talk about robot bartenders or robot cleaners, does it mean that those jobs are going to go?
Yeah. But it will take a long time and it will take a lot of funds because right now the price for those robots is pretty high, so it is quite an investment. However, in the future, that kind of job might go and you will have like a few restaurants that have that policy of no robots, where waiters will be people. But mostly we are moving towards complete automation. Those jobs are more low-skill jobs that do not require particular training especially. If you have a robot that can do that job 24/7 and does not require any pay or anything at all, then that is what we are going to have. But it does not mean that we will have complete unemployment, but the bar will be moved significantly higher. That means that low-skill jobs will be replaced by higher-skill jobs. After all, robots have to be programmed by someone. Robots have to be maintained.
We will have more engineers, IOT specialists, project managers, data scientists, fintech engineers, machinery repairers, risk management specialists, etc. Some jobs are going to be completely eliminated. Some jobs are going to be completely transformed in order to incorporate artificial intelligence into their routines. But even more jobs are going to be created.
How you can help yourself right now
If you are not even aware of artificial intelligence and all the thousands of tools that are out there and how it can impact your job – yeah, you are definitely in trouble. You see, the economy is kind of like natural selection. Strong pray on the weak. Better and faster processes replace slower and more expensive processes. Just do yourself a favor and ask yourself: how artificial intelligence can benefit me? How can it benefit my organization? How can I save time and money for my organization? How can I make myself more productive? How can they deliver more value to the company? Then what you can do is just take 20-30 hours of pure studying and researching how artificial intelligence is going to impact your market, your industry, and your job. And if you do that, if you research all the tools, and you actually take initiative, then you are going to grow. You are going to be ahead of the competition and you do not even have to worry about taking your job because you proved that you can use AI to actually bring more value. And you need to do that because if you are scared now, artificial intelligence is only going to keep progressing, it is only going to keep getting better.
In conclusion, the AI revolution has happened and we need to adapt. Don't be ignorant about AI, but actually try to learn about it, and try to incorporate it because it's an amazing tool that can actually help you grow. So don't worry, as a human you still have a lot to offer.
Do you want to increase your chance of keeping your job with AI on the rise? Follow Workki on YouTube and we will help you with that ;)