We believe that a change in perspective about AI’s role in work is long overdue. 6 And framing AI as a kind of technology that imitates human cognition makes it easy to be misled by exaggerated claims about the ability of machines to replace humans. The zero-sum conception of jobs as fixed bundles of tasks, many of which will increasingly be performed by machines, limits one’s ability to reimagine jobs in ways that create new forms of value and meaning. Making the most of human and machine capabilities will require moving beyond received wisdom about both the nature of work and the capabilities of real-world AI. Now they’re saying, “Why can’t we do it with 1 percent of the people we have? 5īut as the personal computing pioneer Alan Kay famously remarked, “A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.” This is especially true of discussions of the roles of humans and machines in the future of work. People are looking to achieve very big numbers … Earlier, they had incremental, 5 to 10 percent goals in reducing their workforce. The seductiveness of this received wisdom was put into sharp relief by this account of a prevailing attitude at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos: This view comports with the economic goal of achieving scalable efficiency. Such provocative statements naturally prompt the question: How will AI technologies change the role of humans in the workplaces of the future?Īn implicit assumption shaping many discussions of this topic might be called the “substitution” view: namely, that AI and other technologies will perform a continually expanding set of tasks better and more cheaply than humans, while humans will remain employed to perform those tasks at which machines cannot (yet) excel. Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years. The prominent computer scientist Andrew Ng’s slogan “AI is the new electricity” 2 signals that AI is likely to be an economic blockbuster-a general-purpose technology 3 with the potential to reshape business and societal landscapes alike. Telecommunications, Media & EntertainmentĪRTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is one of the signature issues of our time, but also one of the most easily misinterpreted. Infrastructure, Transport & Regional Government
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