The question was simple: “What is the mitigation plan for the increase in global population and the decrease in the number of jobs caused by AI?”
6 years ago I was at a panel event in Alserkal avenue in Dubai called ‘Future of jobs – Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and the Workplace’, where supposedly some of the greatest regional minds in Jobs and AI had the mic. They spoke of statistics, NGOs, startups, Government initiatives, and others, related to this topic, citing pros/cons, and advances.
Being the pragmatist that I am, I was still anxious when the event neared its end and Q&A began, as I had not received the answer to what I assumed was the naturally imposed question of the event; and so I asked it. After throwing glances at one another, and then physically throwing the mic at one another, one of the braver speakers finally took the mic and said “We don’t know.”.
Their unsatisfying answers, and my own analysis of what could possibly be solutions, are presented below.
Half-Baked Answers
- New job roles will be created because of AI! An example was given for automated taxi vehicles. Those self-driving taxis will need someone sitting in the monitor room, look at the panel and making sure the actual driving operations are smooth, and checking gauges and numbers and stuff. So for every 25 taxis, 1 monitoring agent is needed. +1 agent – 25 taxi drivers = -24 new jobs…
- AI allows for new creative roles that can now be needed! With some of the more menial tasks now handled by AI, we can now live up to our full potential. For example, we can be pet fashion designers. We can be bee dancers; bees are very important to our ecosystem, so we can just dance with them every once in a while to lift their spirits and make them happier. Or better yet, we can be AI concierges, as in a concierge to the AI, since its doing the work…
- We can just… Relax. This was an actual suggestion by the panel. They are apparently unfamiliar with insanity, or think we all have the patience and restfulness of a Buddhist monk…
More realistic solutions
The pragmatic cynical realist approach.
- We work less. Initiatives in Sweden and recently other countries have dropped the work week to 4 days. That 20% drop in workload needs to be addressed by others (yes yes without accounting for increase of productivity within the 4 days). This is a solution we can keep adopting over time and dropping the number of work days; however, the more leisure days we have, the more our mental health is affected, as humans are made to work / be worked, it is within our nature. All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy that’s progressively losing its sanity.
- We sandbox AI. Right now AI is like a California wildfire in the middle of summer; it’s going everywhere and consuming everything. If we restrain it to certain functions, it limits both the number of jobs removed as well as the dangers it imposes. For instance, yes to AI in manufacturing automation and monitoring, in overall suggestions and advisory, and reporting, analytics and pattern recognition, and no to AI in managing logistics and self-driving vehicles, in managing security and military matters, and in content creation.
- MAGA: Make AI Generate Assignments! We can put AI to work, to help us create work. We can probe AI’s mind for suggestions on how to solve certain problems that humanity has, what different approaches can be deployed to solve them, and what roles and responsibilities will be needed for that. We can use AI to further our efforts in space and deep sea exploration, creating new jobs, potentially finding new energy sources, and solving problems along the way.
In conclusion, the best way to end this article is by once again me trying to immortalize Francois Rabelais’ very critical quote that we should all always keep in mind: “Science without conscience is only ruin of the soul”.