If there is a technology that has ever divided humans by opinion, race and class is AI. In fact, when artificial intelligence is mentioned you can clearly tell the underlying hostility between employers and employees. One party thinks automation is the way to increase their profit margin, while the other party thinks AI or automation has come to make employers independent, and may not need their services.
In the law industry, things could be worse. AI has taken the role of deciding who’s on the right and who’s on the wrong, but unfortunately, it has already failed the integrity test for being biased. As in, the impact of this tech has brought great anxiety. But, there is always the other side of the coin, and as such, a new perspective from some analysts say the fears surrounding AI use could work to the advantage of job seekers.
A Boom in Machine Intelligence-Related Jobs On the Way
What was meant to be like poison is becoming food to humanity, instead of replacing people, automation is creating new job slots. Already, Facebook has started hiring more people to try and regain its digital security credibility after flaws which have seen millions complain about their personal data privacy. To be precise, over 20,000 digital security experts have been sipped in to try and fix the damage, that has put Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO in deep trouble with authorities, recently.
Talking a bit about Facebook’s problems, it all started when Russian hackers were able to use AI-powered chatbots to create fake news outlets on the platform that ended up influencing the last US’s presidential election. Well, the court is still examining those allegations, but again the social giant found itself on the spot, in fact, several times, in matters related to unauthorized sharing of fan’s data, which made Zuckerberg appear before the Senate – where he promised to control its rather “misbehaving” AI technology.
The Bigger Picture
According to Accenture’s Information Technology director Jim Wilson, the trend we are seeing with Facebook, hiring more employees to fix AI concerns, is reflective of what will happen as bigger companies seek to adapt machine intelligence solutions.
Two months ago Accenture reported the findings of its survey that questioned 1000 plus top CEO’s. The work records that 74 percent of executives are planning or have already started using AI to automate mundane tasks. Which is a clear reflection that more companies will adopt the tech which in a way would translate to more worries in society – but likewise more job slots to counter the concerns.
Conforming Artificial Intelligence to Legal, Ethical and Community Standards
Initially, these were not seen as a big issue until human right based non-governmental organizations and experts individually started campaigns to tame AI’s threat of intimidation. Biased algorithms were at first the biggest worry and this was fuelled by inventions which seemed to widen certain social gaps instead of reducing them. For instance, there was this incident where a model meant for surveillance reported that everybody in the kitchen or near a cooking stove was a woman – exhibiting its gender bias trait.
An appeal is also still in court where a purported biased ruling influenced by AI sentenced a person to life imprisonment. The lawyers driving the appeal argue that the system should have been tested for integrity degree before being relied upon in passing such a serious verdict. That is, each side should have hired their technical crew to validate the system.
In other words, there will be a need for systems validators in all areas of AI application to certify the quality of any tasks entrusted to the technology. There will also be a need to continuously manage AI’s performance – which means hiring folks who’ll be able to flag the bad decisions and errors made by machines.
But Who’s the Biggest Beneficiary Here?
The authors of Human + Machine, Jim Wilson and Paul Daugherty address that while AI is destined to take away as many mundane tasks a possible, the technology will also create millions of other jobs –but the new opportunities will be skill focused. We can say this is what is happening at Facebook.
The two experts say offices and factories are beginning to operate differently with the adaption of new technologies. Now, people work side by side with machines and a good example of that is Zume Pizza a startup that has robots and humans employees working as a team to increase efficiency.
However, looking at the bigger picture, Machine + Human brings up three categories of experts who stand to benefit the most as AI rises, and these include Trainers, Sustainers, and Explainers. The Book puts it clear that trainers will be a team of specialists who’ll be teaching the systems how to do tasks and behave as required. Sustainers will be tasked with ensuring algorithms remain ethical and society compliant, while the last group, Explainers, will be expected to go into AI’s black box, understand its principles of operation, then explain it to the users — how that affects the products and business in general.
It’s obvious that there will be more jobs coming with this tech but as seen now, skills will be key in deciding who remains employed and who doesn’t.
Source: Sanvada
