Automation is an often-overlooked concept when it comes to the study of how human civilization has evolved, which, is a shame, since it has had such a crucial role in making the modern world. The invention of farm equipment meant agriculture required less labor, allowing people to focus their lives on education. These people would go on to create further innovations, creating a cycle in which people create new technologies that give subsequent generations more opportunities to design their own creations.
The automotive industry is a great modern example. Several decades ago, car production plants employed millions, while now, these same factories almost exclusively use robots for the manual labor tasks previously delegated to humans. On the one hand, this has many benefits. Cars are now easily affordable to the regular person and production is now streamlined and faster. On the other hand, however, those jobs working on the factory line are gone, and those previously working on them are left without work.
As artificial intelligence explodes into the modern world, this same process is already beginning to take place. According to Yahoo Finance, as of July 2023, almost a quarter million employees working in the tech sector have been laid off due to being replaced by AI. The idea of replacing expensive employees with comparatively free AI labor is an extremely enticing opportunity for business executives. Just as robots replaced human workers on assembly lines, AI programs have begun to replace human workers sitting in the office.
This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the tech sector either. If you’ve ever had to talk on the phone with customer service for any large company, the voice you first hear after dialing often is no longer a human, but rather a computer. By using voice-to-text software powered by machine learning, calls can be filtered by issue type, and automatically directed to the proper department, where a human can address the caller as required. Sometimes, you won’t even talk to a person at all.
For the sake of clarity; the advancement of machine learning will not lead to artificial intelligence replacing the entire human workforce. Remember back to the previous point about how automation led to the loss of jobs in the automotive industry? This also led to new jobs being created, from designing and programming robots to assemble cars, to technicians maintaining these robots when they inevitably break. The same can be said for artificial intelligence. While self-driving cars may some day replace taxi drivers, this would also lead to job openings in developing and maintaining the software behind them.
The idea that AI will replace humans completely is a scary pitfall to get into, however, this isn’t a situation that humans haven’t experienced before. As technology grows and develops, so does society. Usually for the better.
Works Cited
Bizouati-Kennedy, Yael. “How AI Is Already Causing Layoffs in the Tech Industry.” Yahoo Finance, Yahoo, 7 July 2023, finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-already-causing-layoffs-tech-181221028.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJAmzoKggZHQoJa3SOThKQQJGXifMZImGxyqNzN0QuSfct2VP3Hogm4jAVSBaWYVCO3qG2EFiZ3w9vvVmynD1s7Z-Azpd6vHXVAQGqJzbb8F49e13O-O_d13SdyEm5vAzsdi3hQ3Pni6tJrWmh3Y64m4Fzd_igLHjv54uf8kMykf.
Kothari, Jash. “Artificial Intelligence: Cause of Unemployment.” GeeksforGeeks, 16 Aug. 2019, http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/artificial-intelligence-cause-of-unemployment/.
“Will AI Replace Humans in Customer Service?” Www.ultimate.ai, http://www.ultimate.ai/blog/customer-experience/will-ai-replace-humans-in-customer-service#:~:text=It.
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