Artificial Intelligence and employment

As you might remember from ‘A brief history of AI‘ there have been concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and how it might replace workers for many years. Considerable concerns were raised by people working in car manufacturing when factories began to be automated, for example, and these concerns are still around.

As AI becomes more and more common and is more useful than ever, it also puts some jobs at risk. In a recent government paper, it was suggested that as many as 30% of jobs will be at ‘high risk’ of replacement in 20 years time. That is over it was suggested that as many as 30% of jobs will be at ‘high risk’ of replacement in 20 years time. That is over 10 million jobs, and this particularly affects people working in manufacturing, transport and retail. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower paid jobs such as customer service and call centre jobs, which are already being replaced by AI chat assistants in some companies., and this particularly affects people working in manufacturing, transport and retail. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower paid jobs such as customer service and call centre jobs, which are already being replaced by AI chat assistants in some companies.

Can AI replace all workers?

There are still many jobs which are considered impossible to replace with AI. For example, nurses and care workers are very in-demand in the UK, and are not easy to automate due to how much human interaction is needed. This is also true in education, where school children benefit from human interaction with their teachers. These jobs are still able to benefit from AI, but it is unlikely that they will be fully replaced.

For example, nurses may be able to treat patients more quickly in Accident and Emergency centres if receptionists were able to use special AI tools. Teachers could use AI tools to help mark students’ work, which would give them more time to work on activities.

While some people will be replaced at work by AI, this can also mean that fewer humans will be doing dangerous work which can lead to serious health problems, or doing boring and repetitive work which can easily be automated. These jobs can often be done by robots or machinery controlled by automatic systems, which means that humans are able to do safer and more interesting jobs which AI cannot do.

So while some jobs will certainly be replaced as technology continues to improve, this might have benefits even for those people who need to move into a different career. AI technology can also help people in jobs which are unlikely to be replaced, and in the next step you will be asking AI about how jobs could be improved – using AI!