Losing jobs to technology is
nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively
performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of
automated machinery. Even in cases where the human worker is not completely
replaced by a machine, humans have learnt to rely on a battery of machinery to
be more efficient and accurate.
A report from
the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology said
that 47 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are likely to be replaced by automated
systems. Among the jobs soon to be replaced by machines are real estate
brokers, animal breeders, tax advisers, data entry workers, receptionists and
various personal assistants.
But you
will not need to pack up your desk and hand over to a computer just yet, and in
fact jobs that require a certain level of social intelligence and creativity
such as in education, healthcare, the arts and media are likely to remain in
demand from humans, because such tasks remain difficult to be computerised.
Like it
or not, we now live in an era dominated by Artificial Intelligence(A.I.). A.I. can be seen as a
collection of technologies that can be used to imitate or even to outperform
tasks performed by humans using machines.
We
might not first see it but we cannot avoid running into one or more systems
that use some form of an A.I. algorithm in our day-to-day
activities — such as searching for some information using Google,
purchasing a recommended product on Amazon, or recognising faces in an image
uploaded to Facebook.
Deep Learning
Recent breakthroughs in A.I. are largely attributable to a technique
called deep learning. Often known as machine learning or neural networking,
deep learning involves “training” a computer model so it can recognize objects
from images. The power of deep learning-based A.I. systems lies in their
ability to automatically detect noticeable features and
use them to solve hard recognition problems.
Although humans could easily perform such recognition tasks almost
unconsciously, it is often difficult for a human to explain the exact procedure
at a sufficiently detailed level so that it could be programmed into a
computer. With deep learning all this has changed. Now, deep learning-based
A.I. systems can figure out the important features forsolving difficult problems that
were once thought to be solvable exclusively by humans.
And as
a result, humans will have to mentally prepare for the fact that some of our jobs will be lost to A.I. systems. We might even
have to call A.I. systems our colleagues or bosses in the near future.
But
despite the deeper level of knowledge that our computers will soon acquire,
losing our jobs to machines doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Letting machines do
the bulk of the work means that humans will be freed from routine tasks that
computers are better at performing with higher accuracy rates, such as driving cars.
This
should enable humans to think like humans instead of machines. It will also
free up time and energy for humans to engage in more creative and
intellectually stimulating activities, possibly assisted by A.I.
Emotional Intelligence
A.I.
systems have already become far too complicated for the average person to
understand, let alone repair, so there will be new roles created which will
require people who can act as intermediaries between computers and humans.Similar
to professions such as medicine or law, where professionals with specialised
skills are required to interpret technical details for everyday folk, we will
need professionals who speak the language of A.I.
These
professionals may vary in their skills and are likely to consist of software developers,
computer scientists and data scientists.But ethical issues arising from human and A.I. co-working environments is a real
concern. It is one thing getting a face incorrectly recognized in an image
uploaded to Facebook, but a totally different matter if cancer is misdiagnosed
by an A.I., which could very easily happen. After all, computers make mistakes,
just as people do
Although
A.I.-based systems are becoming smarter than humans in many fields, these
systems are far from perfect and are unlikely to ever be perfect considering
the unpredictable learning mechanisms they use.
That
said, it is likely to be the social and cultural changes that will be the real
challenge, rather than the technical challenge of A.I. itself. So while robots
taking over our jobs can be a good thing, only time will tell if we are ready
to accept them as our co-workers.
This
article was originally published at The Conversation(https://theconversation.com ). Danushka
Bollegala is a senior lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at
University of Liverpool (www.liverpool.ac.uk ).
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