Will Ai Take Away Employment Or Create More Jobs?

Human history is full of evolution and revolution. Humanity has made technological leaps from the invention of the wheel to automated cars. The graph of human technological evolution is always following an upward trend. 

With the invention of electronics and computers, humankind has entered a new technological era in which our dependence on machines and computers increases every passing day. Currently, we live in an age where smart and self-learning algorithms are becoming mainstream, and automation is the next big goal of every organization. This automation will not only decrease the human errors that can cause a productivity loss or accident but will also result in decreased human dependence.

Currently, many machines require human supervision or constant human input to operate smoothly and the way they should. Without human supervision, accidents can occur, or machines cannot perform at all. This has generated millions of jobs as human operators run machines at production facilities and other businesses. 

However, as the more powerful computers are making their way into the mainstream (or secret labs), there is a lot of focus on automating processes and reducing machines' human dependency. This is being achieved by leveraging the self-learning abilities of advanced algorithms. These algorithms are usually known as Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning algorithms.

According to Merriam Webster dictionary, "the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior" is known as Artificial Intelligence. This means that computers and machines are being trained to mimic human behavior and hence become able to do tasks done by humans more efficiently.

Since computers are becoming more and more involved in our daily jobs, this leaves us wondering whether AI will take all our human jobs and make us jobless? Or will AI create many jobs for humans to do?

Let us explore how Artificial Intelligence can impact human jobs.

Will Artificial Intelligence take away our jobs?

Change is the universal constant, and those who adapt to the change succeed while those who resist or do not adapt, perish. In his book, 21 Lessons for 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari describes that there will be a class of useless people in the future. These will be the people who do not have any skillset required by the modern employer. These people will either perish or live a life slumber depending on their country's government and economic condition. Such people will exist all around the globe and will not be able to find jobs as most of the jobs will be overtaken by automated machines and robots. He quotes in his book, 

"By 2050, a new class of people might emerge – the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable."

AI revolution is going to take away the jobs!

Self-driving cars

The trend has already started, and such a future is not very far in which people will struggle to find a job to feed their hungry mouths. The recent trend and emergence of self-driving cars is just a teaser of that future. In our current time, a lot of people are driving cabs or simply serving as drivers. According to an estimate, 3.5 million people in the United States alone are associated with the driving profession. However, these people are bound to be jobless with more self-driving cars making their way into the market.

Amazon's staff-less hypermarkets

Another alarm bell was rung by Amazon when the company launched their staff-less supermarkets in which there were no employees or sales staff. This is another sign that many people associated with this profession can lose their job by 2050 as many more supermarkets will go staff-less and robots will take over the human jobs. 

Automated burger joints

Many fast-food chains, including Mcdonalds', are trying their hands on new technologies and investing in Artificial Intelligence to create automated drive-through order fulfillment. According to some reports, Mcdonald's aims to eliminate their employee dependency until the mid-2020s and get their restaurants fully automated.    

Automated academic software

Many companies like Google and Amazon are determined to automate education to any extent that they can. Automated paper checking and marking software are already here. This might make many teachers jobless or get paid less.

Many resume writing services are automating resume shortlisting hence requiring minimum human intervention at the resume shortlisting process. With AI, the process has become extremely smooth and easy, and now very few human hours as compared to before.

These are quite alarming scenarios as the lesser the need of humans; the more people will go jobless. However, not all hope is lost, as many experts think AI will create 7.2 million jobs by 2037. 

AI will create some exciting prospects.

AI in Marketing and Sales

AI is already playing a bigger role in business development. AI can assist large-scale sales forces through the development of intelligent databases. Tools like Zendesk and Salesforce use AI to create insights that can enable organizations to attract the proper sales staff.

AI will create new jobs.

A new WEF research estimates that over 50% of the total employees of firms would decrease over the next years. Even if AI eliminates employment, it creates a need for new jobs. Human beings will need to check, enhance and manage AI to perform correctly. 

The WEF said that extra abilities to administer the interface between technology and people are required in the new jobs. The WEF says that companies will need people to administrate the connection between technology and humans.

Man and Machine tag teams

The future of work will depend on the way man and machine will interact. An AI has strengths like speed, precision, calculation, etc., while humans have the ability to make improvised decisions, empathy, and better judgment. AI and humans will combine to enhance business outputs.

Accenture's research last year projected that new AI-human cooperation applications might increase jobs by 10% by 2020.

These facts might be true to some extent, but the future of jobs will be decided by how quickly we adjust with the AI and make our jobs seamless as well as productive.

Author bio: Halian Ronaldo is a content writer at Research Prospect who has written hundreds of articles to assist students’ career life.