Will Robots and AI Cause Mass Unemployment?

There is a lot of fear oriented towards artificial intelligence and its relatively rapid rise. This is problematic, at least for the people who are only reading flashy articles on the topics and ignoring the scientific articles which explain what is going on behind the scenes. AI is a topic which is ongoing and most people are tired of it, especially if they are following the smartphone scene, where the word is thrown around as frequently as screen and camera are.

Automatization is the only logical choice going forward and people have been worried that this will eventually lead to a lot of people losing their jobs. Is this true and should we fear automatization? Yes and no.

Automatization Does Not Mean Fully Automated

Robots do make a lot of things in factories, but, to set these robots up, there is a lot of work and input involved. Imagine a robot in any factory, making the same mistake across 100,000 products. What this means is that there will be 100,000 faulty devices and because someone told the robot to do a single thing very poorly. Automatization is still ways off before it becomes something that will not require any human input. It is also worth noting that automatization which people imagine is taking place in most factories is very expensive and requires a much larger investment than the payoff would be, immediate and in the long run. Most businesses would not benefit from automatization.

AIs Are not Superhuman

While AIs are good at doing some tasks, they are pretty bad at others. AIs need tons of data, which means that they will simply not be able to be used in some cases. AIs can work when they are presented with lots of data, but are really bad when it comes to opinions and similar things. 

Calculations, mathematics, number crunching and everything which is similar to this, is what AIs excel at. You will not be losing your jobs anytime soon just because some AIs are getting better at computations and predictions.

Strive to Improve

Improving is always something that we should be striving for, but we sometimes forget it and then we start panicking. People are concerned that they will be replaced with AI technology. The problem that is more immediate and often put into action is an employer hiring another human to do our job instead of us.

If one is slacking, doing a poor job and generally not looking out for themselves by not improving and being versatile, they can be replaced at any point. Even when we are improving and becoming better and more knowledgeable, we can still be replaced. This is why when we are working on improving ourselves, we can easily overcome the “shock” of looking for a job. 

Think about improving yourself, rather than whether an AI will take your job. Learn new skills and how to take care of yourself in multiple ways. AIs replacing humans are still decades away, but being aware of the times is encouraged, but not crippled by them.

admin