Artificial intelligence presents humans with enormous opportunities in handling various problems we need to solve. The first radical impact of AI was the technology Alan Turing implemented during WW2 to decipher the Nazi Enigma machine used for protecting crucial messages. Turing understood that the human brain was not capable of processing information and coming up with solutions as fast as the machine would.
Nowadays, it is almost a common fact, at least in the scientific community, that AI can perform most of the tasks a human does much faster and with much better results. And, in spite of having benefitted humankind so far, this technology might disrupt our society and make us negligible. The current job market is arranged in such a way that an individual first should study specific subjects in the university and then work the same job according to his or her specialization for the next 40 years until retiring. But AI is constantly developing and is going to take over more and more jobs in the future. For example, AI has proven to be more efficient than humans in jobs such as trading and accounting, since it can process millions of data points from different sources simultaneously and choose the most optimal solution better than people that specialize in this field would do. Most damage, of course, would be done to the so-called blue collars jobs, such as couriers/delivery people, bus/taxi drivers, warehousing, etc.
One would argue that during the Industrial Revolution, there was a panic that the new machines would leave people jobless and disrupt the entire economy. However, it eventually led to the greatest economic growth and technological revolutions in history. Consequently, looking back at the outcomes of the Industrial Revolution, we might make positive predictions about the outcomes of the AI revolution. But these two are fundamentally different: while the Industrial revolution aimed to enhance the performance of humans in physical terms, meaning jobs that required strength and repetitive actions, AI is going to do so in cognitive terms, jobs that often require outstanding skills in processing information. And still, one could argue that while AI is going to replace some of the jobs, it will create even more of them, but where is the guarantee that humans will do better in these newly emerged jobs that AI? And even if they do, how much time is it going to take until AI outperforms us there?
Thus, tens of millions of people would have to adapt to the new state of affairs in the job market, change their field of work, and relearn and acquire new skills. But how many of them would succeed in doing so? A 40-year-old accountant with 15+ work experience in the same field who needs to pay off his mortgage simply would not have enough time to do so. This might lead to the rise of the “useless class”, people that are replaced with machines, people with no economic or political power. New political, economic, and societal orders can arise due to the AI revolution, or, on other hand, the inequality gap might widen even further, leaving those at the bottom completely hopeless and powerless.
These hazards pose critical questions to the politicians, economists, and sociologists that seem to have not one proper affirmative answer to the facing threats. In my opinion, AI is probably the greatest innovation humankind has come up with, but at the same time it might be the most dangerous one, and we must prepare for the possible threats it might pose to us.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/Alan-Turing-and-the-beginning-of-AI
I completely agree with your opinion that AI can bring upon us new problems to overcome, yet I think that more dangerous than AI itself are the people who create it, and it’s them we should focus on. In the hands of such inconspicuous people lays the ability to shape our future. Therefore future innovators should not only be the program tapers but also people with a vision for the future.
Secondly, as to the matter that AI will eventually take over all of our jobs – I think it’s unlikely. Humans continue to evolve at a fast pace, and we always find new areas for improvement. Right now, we might not be able to imagine the jobs of the future as a knight wouldn’t be able to imagine a programmer, but if we continue to develop as we do, who knows what jobs might await us? Jobs that no machine will be able to perform for us.