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A.I. and robots aren't gunning for your job
Source: Grant Gross


Artificial intelligence and robots aren't coming for your job anytime soon, the U.S. White House's chief economic adviser says.

Some technology experts worry about the economic impact of A.I.-powered computers and robots, but Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, predicts that A.I. will grow the economy instead of taking jobs away. While some jobs may disappear, A.I. will create new jobs and consumer demand for new products and services, he said Wednesday at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C.

While technology critics believe "the robots are going to take all our jobs away from us," A.I. won't change the basic rules of economics, Furman said. A.I. will create some economic challenges, just as other technologies have, he said.

In recent months, news outlets have published stories about fears of A.I. taking workers' jobs away, Furman noted. But worries about robots taking away jobs date back to the 1930s, and fears of machines replacing workers go back centuries, he said.


"What you find is the basic economic law that machines make you richer, and richer people want to spend more money," he said. "And that grows the economy."

A.I. systems still have to be trained heavily to specialize in one area, making them a poor fit to replace many jobs, Furman said. A.I. "just can't wander from place to place on its own," he said.

Instead of worries about replacing jobs, the biggest A.I.-related challenge for the U.S. and other countries is "we don't have enough A.I. yet," Furman said. Most developed countries have seen anemic growth in productivity over the past decade, and A.I. could resurrect the numbers, he suggested.

A.I. can bring benefits in several industries, including healthcare, consumer fraud detection and criminal justice, "and that's just going to accelerate and grow over the years and decades to come," he said.

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Furman and France Cordova, director of the National Science Foundation, called on the federal government to invest in A.I. research. The NSF has several "big ideas" for funding that touch on A.I., Cordova said.

The U.S. government spends about $200 million on A.I. research each year, while private investments account for about $2.4 billion a year, Furman said.

U.S. government R&D spending has not kept up with economic growth since the 1960s, but the government still funds more than half of the basic research being done in the country, he said.

The federal government's research budget isn't likely to grow significantly, but it can be "smarter" about using the funds it has, Furman said. Expect more government projects like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency self-driving vehicle challenge, he said.

The U.S. also needs a more highly educated workforce to drive A.I. forward, Furman added. "Computers can beat humans at Go, chess and Jeopardy, but those computers needed to be programmed by humans," he said.


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