Kai Fu Lee, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and venture capitalist from China has made his prediction regarding our future in a big interview to CBS company.
In addition to the already familiar qualitative statements (for example that the emergence of AI will change the world even better than the appearance of electricity), he formulated some of his quantitative predictions. In particular, Lee believes that in the perspective of 15-25 years, about 40% of people will not be able to compete with algorithms in their work, and this work will have to be changed.
In the interview to CBS he said: “AI will increasingly replace repetitive jobs, not just for blue-collar work, but a lot of white-collar work. Chauffeurs, truck drivers, anyone who does driving for a living, their jobs will be disrupted more in the 15-25-year time frame,” he tells. “Many jobs that seem a little bit complex, chef, waiter, a lot of things will become automated. I believe AI is going to change the world more than anything in the history of mankind. More than electricity,” says Lee.
But it’s okay, it’s more dependent on the authorities who will be forced to somehow regulate this whole process of robotization so that people do not remain without work. Here is another idea from this interview that I really like. Lee believes that the most dramatic changes are not even waiting for the field of transportation but education.
And just AI will help to teach people the future as modern obsolete systems are not capable of. Currently, Lee is financing companies that are providing schools across China with modern AI systems which are designed to make education process better and more productive. The AI-system is being designed to gauge student interest and intelligence by subject.
Lee also believes that in the future AI will be able to analyze student’s portfolio and eliminate problem areas in difficult subjects. Who knows, maybe in the future teachers will lose their jobs altogether.
But it is not all so pessimistic as Lee said in the interview that “in some sense, there is the human wisdom that always overcomes these technological revolutions. The invention of the steam engine, the sewing machine, electricity, have all displaced jobs. We’ve gotten over it. The challenge of AI is this 40 percent, whether it is 15 or 25 years, is coming faster than the previous revolutions.”
And in the end of this post I want to recommend you probably the best book that I have read in 2018: AI Superpowers by Kai Fu Lee.
Sources:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/venture-capitalist-kai-fu-lee-ai-will-displace-40-percent-of-worlds-jobs-in-as-soon-as-15-years-60-minutes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee
As far as I heard, in near future human in average will have to change his specialization at least 3 times. It means that in future the most important skill will be flexibility. I absolutely agree with the statement, that throughout our history occurred many technological revolutions and a lot of them changed the world dramatically, but none of them left people unemployed for a long period of time. New jobs and specializations will appear, and human labor would not be replaced immediately.
Most likely, the working class will be replaced by an AI, but nevertheless there will be many professions that will not be eradicated by robots, although many people think that this will happen
For the first I think that as long as people live that long they will be scared about the development. We shouldn’t be scared about AI which will displace repetitive jobs because we can easily change our specializations for the others. For the second we are this one who control AI and no one other can do that. So if we will have some problems with it we will easily cut or solve it in the very beginning.