With scientists effectively creating a functioning brain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached an inflection point where it has started to significantly change our way of life. AI has the potential to solve some of the world’s greatest problems, and yet, in its early days, we are using it to eliminate the enjoyment of driving, make a computer “World Chess Champion”, and cut hundreds of thousands of jobs.
As an aspiring business economist, from my perspective, I understand that businesses prosper with advanced automation. Consumers get cheaper products and automation improves productivity, thereby increasing growth of an economy.
Some are oblivious to the underlying effects of AI. The jobs of countless individuals will potentially be replaced
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The prime example of this is Detroit, Michigan. Though not all, a significant percent of jobs lost in Detroit is due to automation in the automobile sector. Though the Big Three automakers increased productivity and reduced costs, many other businesses suffered in the Detroit area.
The increasing decoupling of productivity and employment has been something Erik Brynjolfsson, of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, blames the advancement of digital technologies for. The rise in productivity when compared to the stagnation of job growth leads him to believe that our society is losing more jobs than are created by AI technologies, all in the name of increasing profits and beating their competition. Businesses cannot thrive in an absolute zero-sum game. As Michael Porter of Harvard suggests, businesses should strive for a positive-sum game.
According to a MIT “Technology Review” article by David Rotman (published June 12, 2013), the top three fastest growing jobs between 2000 and 2010 were software engineers for applications, computer support workers, and software engineers for systems. The top three jobs most vulnerable to automation were butchers, secretaries and stenographers, and payroll