Is Artificial Intelligence Going To Take Your Job?
Source: Or Shani
Fears that new technologies will spell the end of the human workforce have existed since the beginning of work. These fears aren’t unfounded: jobs defined by repetitive manual tasks have been consistently replaced by technology. In the short term, this has led to true workforce upheaval. In the long term, technology has proven to create more jobs — and more industries — than it’s destroyed.
However, pointing at past economic trends to dispel people’s fears about being replaced by robots has not been effective recently. That’s because this time, the conversation comes with a new twist.
That new twist is self-learning and autonomous technologies — machines that not only become smarter over time, but that can also make logic-based decisions based on their newfound knowledge, and operate with little to no human intervention. This kind of technology doesn’t only seem to pose a threat to manual jobs that can be easily automated; theoretically, it threatens jobs that require learning and decision-making — two historically human qualities.
Does this mean that machines will replace the need for humans in knowledge-based industries? Not necessarily. In many cases, I think artificial intelligence will move in to foster efficiency and work in tandem with professionals.
Expanding The Scope Of Human Work
Some experts suggest that artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) ability to automate complex knowledge work could threaten the jobs of lawyers, librarians, professors, policy analysts and even journalists. However, in many cases, we’re seeing AI introduced to expand the scope of these professionals’ work rather than replace it.
The Associated Press (AP), for instance, recently introduced artificial intelligence-driven reporting that allows the organization to cover topics such as Minor League Baseball, which they weren’t able to cover in the past. Now they’re able to cover it extensively and even provide local coverage, in some cases.
In the marketing industry, we’re seeing a similar trend. Before I started my career as a data scientist in the field (nearly a decade before launching my current digital advertising company), I remember seeing digital advertising as an exciting new frontier — something totally different than the advertising before it. But it became clear that this new type of advertising was old school. While digital advertising came with distinctly digital needs, advertisers were addressing these new ad formats with the same relationship-based approaches that made sense for traditional channels.
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