The Future of AI: It's Not as Bad as It Seems

Essay

By: Jack Wilson

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Many people assume that in the future their jobs will be taken over by robots and that robots will take over the world. However, those ideas are just not true. I have been researching how Artificial Intelligence will affect our lives in the future. To find out, I focused on one big part of AI: how it will affect our jobs.

Despite what many people think, AI is nowhere close to replacing all of our jobs. Chris Hollister tells us in an interview that back in the 1800’s, when the power loom was invented, many people were scared since they thought they would be put out of a job (Hollister). But instead, the loom helped the people a lot by giving them more time to focus on other more important things. For instance, at early American textile mills, owners provided time and facilities for education for workers because of the need for workers who could learn rapidly enough to run the power looms efficiently. James Bessen writes in the Washington Post that “an experienced weaver could weave over twice as much cloth in an hour as a new recruit. This bolstered the bottom line. In areas where early integrated mills did not hire a labor force who could learn quickly, the mills often failed” (Bessen). This shows that when technology comes along, people weren’t put out of a job, but actually got more educated and had a better job.

In addition, Luke Dormehl writes in Thinking Machines that some jobs will be ethically replaced, like self-driving cars avoiding car accidents or robots doing the dangerous work in factories (Dormehl). This means that, even if AI replaces jobs, they could be helping out the people they’re replacing by forcing them to do a safer and better job. This shows that AI could be like all other technology in that when it is invented, it replaces some jobs with others and also improves the working conditions of all jobs. Instead of replacing all of our jobs, AI might actually make them better.

However, all of this is only relevant if it makes economic sense for AI to replace us. Jack Crawford, CEO of Datalog.ai, said in an interview, “This one company offers [robot mall cops] for $20/hour. However, human mall cops are being paid $16/hour. Malls won’t use robot mall cops until they are cheaper than human mall cops” (Crawford). This shows that not only does AI have to get smart enough to do what we do, AI also has to be cheaper than we are. AI still has a long way to go, and almost all of our jobs are safe for now.

This all goes to show that our future with AI is not as rampant and dangerous as it seems. If AI replaces our jobs, we won’t go homeless as a human race. Instead, we will move on to better and safer jobs, and we’ll improve our quality of life. Also, AI has to be more cost-effective than human labor, which, contrary to popular belief, is not always the case. For these reasons, our jobs will probably get better, instead of disappearing into the void.