Is AI triggering unemployment?

AI is changing the world around us

AI is taking over and this process is unstoppable. You may like it or you may hate it but the era of technological boom has come. Technology is advancing and getting deeply integrated into various aspects of life. Innovations are no longer distant and fantastical but rather easy to use and therefore accessible to a broad audience. 

Machines optimize a lot of processes and make our life easier. The benefits are countless but it’s no good getting blinded by them. After all, drawbacks always come along with advantages. As technology is becoming smarter, the risk of machines replacing human workers across industries is growing respectively. And it is booming at an extremely fast pace making us look forward to further advancements with bated breath. 

Here’s an interesting historical fact:

In 1965, philosophy professor Hubert Dreyfus, a critic of artificial intelligence, claimed that a machine would never beat a human in a chess game. Two years later the sceptical scholar was himself checkmated by an MIT-developed computer. 

Taking into account the current opportunities for technological evolution, it is difficult for us to even make assumptions. These days, every innovation is like a dream come true. 

So, with all this in mind, should we be afraid of AI and its promising prospects? Will computers be our enemies or rather friends? Let’s figure everything out in the slightest detail. 

Top 10 impactful applications of AI

The number of applications of AI across various industries and domains is steadily growing providing more space for automation. 

According to Gartner, the deployment of AI has risen from 25% in 2018 to 37% today. 

Servion Global Solutions has predicted that by 2025, 95% of customer interactions will be powered by AI.

Before we move on to the most popular use cases, let’s take a minute to quickly look through the 3 types of AI available now. 

1. Narrow AI (also known as Weak AI) refers to goal-oriented AI systems designed to perform specific tasks or solve specific problems such as facial recognition, speech recognition/voice assistants, driving a car, or surfing the internet. These systems are trained and programmed to excel in a particular domain or perform a specific function. Examples include virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa, recommendation systems, and image recognition systems.
2. General AI (also known as Strong AI or Deep AI) is a system that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply intelligence across a wide range of tasks similar to human intelligence. These systems can perform intellectual tasks at or beyond human capabilities. In simple terms, AGI can think, understand, and act in a manner that is indistinguishable from that of a human. Currently, we do not have fully realized general AI systems and their development remains a topic of ongoing research.  
3. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is a hypothetical AI that surpasses human intelligence in almost every aspect. It represents AI systems that would have superior problem-solving abilities, creativity, and decision-making skills compared to humans. ASI is when computers become self-aware and exceed human intelligence and ability.

AI is being applied in a variety of areas by either small or large corporations to get insights into customer behavior and make data-driven suggestions. Google, Netflix, Facebook, and others are actively leveraging the power of artificial intelligence. 

Broadly speaking, AI is applied for effective data processing. This category encompasses self-driving cars, smart assistants, disease mapping, manufacturing robots, and many more. 

The uses of artificial intelligence vary generally and specifically for numerous fields. We’ve prepared a list of the top 10 applications of AI you should know.

AI in Healthcare

Doctors, patients, and caregivers all benefit significantly from powering healthcare services with AI. Advanced technology allows for detecting diseases and identifying cancer cells, analyzing chronic conditions to ensure early diagnosis, providing more precise robotic operations, ensuring effective health monitoring while watching all the vital signals, and carrying out day-to-day administrative activities like scheduling meetings, maintaining organized file systems to reduce errors and boost productivity. Emerging technologies make medicine accessible to everyone and take healthcare services to the next level.

AI in Retail and E-commerce

AI gives e-commerce businesses a competitive advantage while ensuring personalized shopping experiences for customers, enhanced online buying journeys with virtual assistants and chatbots, price optimization, and fraud prevention. AI is doing great in inventory management, data analysis concerning sales and supply chain operations, presence of stocks, and future requirements through predictive analysis and improvement in product availability. Retailers bring AI to their stores so customers can find what they need and try it on much faster.

AI in Education

AI-powered tools enter the education sector as well and provide highly personalized learning experiences. It is achieved through smart and creative content creation, accessing extra learning material or assistance through voice assistants, and thorough monitoring of valuable students’ data. AI encourages learning and teaching through personalized recommendations and focusing on the difficulty level and pace of understanding comfortable for each student. 

AI in Robotics

AI plays a significant role in robotics by enabling machines to perceive, reason, and act autonomously. The list of industries where AI-enabled robots are widely utilized is growing daily. As for now, the most popular are the manufacturing and packaging industries. Artificial intelligence provides robots with computer vision that allows them to navigate, sense, and react appropriately. AI robots already scale up manufacturing, space exploration, the transport industry, and more. 

AI in Marketing

Marketing automation is a must-have now. AI marketing enables automated decisions based on data collection, analysis, and further observations of audience or critical economic patterns that may reshape a marketing strategy. Marketers take advantage of top-notch technology therefore can engage with customers more effectively. Having valuable customer data, they reach the target audience in the right place and at the right time with personalized messages.

AI proves its effectiveness in terms of content marketing as per the brand’s style and voice. 

Chatbots powered by AI, Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Generation, and Natural Language Understanding analyze the user’s language and respond as a human. 

AI in Finance

80% of banks are highly aware of the potential benefits presented by AI (Insider Intelligence’s AI in Banking report). Artificial intelligence is changing a wide range of financial services – either personal finance, corporate finance, or consumer finance. AI adds up to streamlining and optimizing procedures with risk assessment, fraud detection, and management, financial advisory services, and automated trading in finance. 

AI in Gaming

Gaming provides such an extensive scope for AI applications. This sector is among the AI adoption leaders. 

Artificial intelligence largely contributes to the creation of immersive, engaging, and highly interactive gaming experiences. Users all over the world are more attracted to titles with complex gameplays that, however, seem quite realistic. And that’s what AI can do. 

Furthermore, the emerging technology can also be used to predict human behavior. With this data, game design and testing can be improved later on.  

AI in Transportation

AI-powered vehicles go mainstream and this innovative concept is meant to beat inefficient traffic management, a high percentage of accidents, increased transportation costs, and decreased sustainability. Self-driving cars are no longer a fantasy but a part of our reality. They’re becoming normal and commonplace thanks to AI. AI is applied to the vehicle’s camera, radar, cloud services, GPS, and control signals for seamless operation. 

AI-based customer service that interprets human language and predictive maintenance will scale up the safety and efficiency of the transportation system. This intelligent transportation system, in turn, has the potential to revolutionize public transportation by making it way more comfortable, accessible, and safe.

AI in Software Development

AI brings more efficiency and boosts productivity in the realm of software development through automated repetitive coding tasks, like code creation, debugging, and testing. AI takes over monotonous labor and completes tasks much faster.

Low-code and no-code applications with user-friendly interfaces and non-technical terms and codes are another great achievements. With AI, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to create an app – a simple one but still. Artificial intelligence proves its usefulness in building software for objects, visual elements, facial recognition, chatbots, applications to automate repetitive tasks, analytical and suggestive applications, and so on.

AI in Cybersecurity

As cyberattacks grow in volume and complexity, it gets critical to come up with new solutions for fighting cybercriminals. AI is changing the game for cybersecurity. Automating threat detection with AI results in significant time and cost savings. 54% of companies implementing AI solutions reported experiencing cost savings and efficiencies (IBM, 2022). This involves thorough analyses of large chunks of risk data to speed response times and to augment under-resourced security operations.

AI is used in cybersecurity in the following ways:

• Threat detection
• Intrusion detection and prevention
• Malware detection
• User behavior analytics
• Phishing and fraud detection
• Vulnerability management
• Incident response
• Security automation

Nevertheless, it’s important to note that while AI has significant potential in cybersecurity, it is not a silver bullet and should be used in conjunction with other security measures and human expertise. The evolving nature of cyber threats requires a multi-layered approach that combines AI technologies with human intelligence to effectively protect against attacks.

AI and employment: what we should be aware of

Artificial intelligence has a tremendous impact on employment – that’s a fact. The world around us is developing and it’s impossible to ignore the most notable advancements as they are being seamlessly integrated into numerous aspects of life. The short answer to the topical question of whether AI will replace some jobs is “Yes, definitely”. The possibility of replacing a great share of human work with machines is high as ever before. Additionally, it is economically viable, too. 

According to Goldman Sachs, up to 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be affected by artificial intelligence. This means 18% of work globally is predicted to be computerized. But calm down – it does not mean that we all run the risk of being unemployed. What you should understand is that all jobs are roughly broken down into two categories: there are roles extremely vulnerable to the upcoming changes (simple repetitive tasks) as well as roles with a strong human element that are less likely to be much affected (tasks that change often and therefore require considerable adaptability and flexibility). 

Before we get down to the main problem related to AI and its promising capabilities, we’d like you to consider several points every time you get anxious because of AI and unemployment:

• AI can possibly replace some jobs – those that can be easily automated using AI (manufacturing, transportation, customer service, etc.).
• AI will also create new jobs in areas such as data analysis, software development, and AI programming. New skills will be in demand. This will force workers to adapt to new roles and responsibilities.
• AI is anticipated to enhance productivity and drive economic growth through time-consuming and inefficient tasks automation.
• The impact of AI on employment will vary by industry depending on the speed of the technology adoption and the way it is integrated into existing systems.

AI is driving unemployment

The more AI progresses the wider becomes the pool of tasks that can be easily automated. This may result in entire job industries disappearing.

When it comes to monotonous and repetitive tasks, AI is doing pretty well. For instance, customer care/call center operation, document classification, discovery and retrieval, content moderation, operation, and support of production lines and factories rely increasingly on computers and less on human work. 

The amount of industries widely affected by automation gets larger day by day. Some of them are:

• Manufacturing
• Agriculture
• Food service
• Retail
• Transportation
• Logistics
• Hospitality and tourism
• Finance
• Healthcare
• Cybersecurity
• Job search

AI brings benefits as well as impacts unemployment within these sectors. The shift towards automation is likely to pick up the pace as businesses with tight budgets look to reduce overhead. 

AI introduces new opportunities for workers

But things in the job market are not as bad as might seem at first. It is worth noting that while AI can automate specific tasks, it can also create new job roles and opportunities. For example, the development, maintenance, and supervision of AI systems require skilled professionals. Additionally, AI can enhance productivity and innovation in various industries, leading to the creation of new businesses and jobs.

To mitigate the potential negative impacts of AI on employment, it is important to focus on retraining and upskilling the workforce to adapt to changing job requirements. This can help individuals smoothly transition into new roles that complement AI technologies and leverage human skills such as creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. 

A report from the World Economic Forum in 2020 estimated that by 2025, emerging technologies will replace 85 million jobs globally yet create 97 million new roles.

The recent artificial intelligence statistics also show that more than nine in ten (91% to be precise) top businesses surveyed have been successfully investing in AI (NewVantage, 2022). 

We are on the verge of a major change in direction toward an AI-dominated job economy. What does this mean for the workforce? Automation will lead to low-skill labor position reduction. Such jobs are highly vulnerable to the shift so measures must be taken, namely “upskilling” and “reskilling” of the workforce. 

The future is unpredictable and in a few years or decades, there will be new jobs that don’t exist now due to new pain points and rising needs emerging within an AI-dominated industry.

Even though the challenges are serious, we cannot ignore the perks we enjoy with AI adoption. Artificial intelligence is supposed to push productivity, drive profits, and trigger business growth thus enabling employers to create new job places. 61% of workers say that AI adoption has caused a productivity rise (SnapLogic, 2021).

The future is exciting!

Whether you like it or not but innovations have always changed the game for industries and entire workforces. Things never stand still. It just takes businesses to react quickly and show flexibility to sustain and remain competitive. There is no reason to expect that technology won’t change the way we live, work, and communicate once again. It’s a circular process – once certain jobs are lost to new technology, other roles are created in their place.

It’s clear enough that AI will disrupt the way we work – and that’s what we have to accept. At the same time, we should focus on the potential gains from more productive work and cheaper services. 

We should work with AI, not against it! Some experts believe we are quite far from ‘real AI’ at the moment. This means that even the smartest machines still require a little bit of human intervention now. We don’t know how long it will take for this to change and whether it will eventually change but people working alongside artificial intelligence, rather than being replaced by it, is quite a realistic scenario for now (Dimitris Papanikloaou, a professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University).

Going back to the main question we can say that AI algorithms and the technology based on them are unlikely to completely replace human workers now but they have chances to become an integral part of everyday working life allowing companies to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks while scaling up strategic decision making.