IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is calming nerves about AI stealing jobs by pointing to the declining working-age population.
He said that given the declines – seen in developing economies around the world – having people perform routine tasks that AI could do “is not an option”. “We will need technology to do some mundane work so that people can do work of higher value.” Ultimately, he added, “there will be job creation” with AI, as jobs will also be added in areas that create more value.
His remarks were made by the Nikkei interview Published on Saturday, it is similar to the one presented this week by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who spoke at Wall Street Journal CEB summit in London on Wednesday.
“Here are the facts,” Schmidt said. “We don’t have enough kids… All demography says there will be a shortage of people for jobs. Too many jobs and not enough people for at least 30 years.”
Lost jobs to artificial intelligence
Schmidt argued that while near-term job losses may be inevitable, AI will have an overall positive effect due to enhanced efficiency and technology’s ability to replace occupations that are already increasingly difficult to fill in shrinking labor markets.
Goldman Sachs estimated In March, while AI may lead to new jobs and a productivity boom, it may soon replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs in the United States and Europe.
If AI ultimately helps society in the long run while creating hardship for many in the near term, it wouldn’t be the first technological innovation.
MIT Professor of Economics Daron Acemoglu Tell the financial times This week, while the Industrial Revolution led to progress, “you also had costs that were huge and long-term. A hundred years of harsher conditions for workers, lower real wages, much worse health and living conditions, less autonomy, greater hierarchy.”
With artificial intelligence threatening many white collar jobs today, he believes the United States needs a strong labor relations movement. “We need to create an environment where workers have a voice,” he said, proposing something more like Germany’s system—where public, private and workers work together—than America’s more controversial company-by-company approach.
A few months ago, Acemoglu joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in signing an open letter calling for a pause on AI tools more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4. The message has been partially read:
“He should We automate all functions, including the ? He should We develop non-human brains that may eventually outnumber, surpass intelligence, become obsolete, and replace us? He should Are we risking losing control of our civilization? Such decisions should not be delegated to unelected technical leaders. Strong AI systems should only be developed once we are confident that their effects will be positive and that their risks will be manageable.”
Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a round meeting with European leaders, He said Friday: “This idea that artificial intelligence will advance to a point where humans have no work to do or no purpose has never really resonated.”
“The force will shift”
Then again, in March 2021 — before most people were aware of ChatGPT or OpenAI, now valued at nearly $30 billion — Altman He wrote in a lengthy post:
“My work on OpenAI reminds me every day of the magnitude of social and economic change that will come sooner than most people think. Software that can think and learn will do more and more of the work that people are doing now. More power will shift from labor to capital. If not Public policy adjusts accordingly, and most people will end up worse off than they are today.”
In 2019, Altman co-founded Worldcoin, a digital currency startup that involves scanning the eyeball for identification. If artificial intelligence takes away too many jobs and governments decide a universal basic income is needed, Worldcoin wants to be the distribution mechanism for those payments. For now, it aims to be the way people prove they’re human and not AI bots on the Internet. The company announced $115 million in Series C funding this week.
Krishna He said recently that IBM will slow or suspend hiring in non-customer-facing positions that currently number about 26,000 workers. He added, “I could easily see 30% of that being replaced by AI and automation over five years.”
