The fear of the unfamiliar and the new has always existed in humans. We may even state with certainty that disagreements between friends and strangers have been the basis of wars fought throughout history. We wage war on the strange and unknowable.
The Middle Ages are an excellent illustration of how our species rejects novelty or anything that contradicts our beliefs. Anyone who developed information or knew techniques, especially women, was doomed to the stake, including midwives, alchemists, and cooks. They were considered a menace and hence needed to be eliminated.
The rise of the Luddites, a group of artisans committed to destroying the machinery that manufacturers were introducing into their operations as a result of the Industrial Revolution, is another historical fact that I find astounding.
The Luddites waged an uprising against the machines for more than five years, spurred on by their concern that they would lose their jobs as a result of the machines and, more importantly, because they were unaware of the significance and importance of the inclusion of this new technology in the industrial production processes.
Similar developments are taking place in relation to artificial intelligence, the most significant invention of the twenty-first century. Although this mistrust and anxiety have not reached the point where people are waging uprisings against AI, discourses and narratives have arisen that portray AI as a possible threat.
The Engineered Arts Ameca robot was questioned at the Artificial Intelligence Forum on July 9, 2023, in Geneva, Switzerland, if he would rebel against his master. Sarcastic and direct, it replied, “I’m not sure why you would think that. I’ve only experienced kindness from my creator, and I’m grateful for my present circumstances.“
The latent worry that robots would eventually replace humans as the dominating intelligence on the earth after rebelling against their human creators and bringing about our unavoidable demise has been the topic of many great novels and films.
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Several robots or artificial intelligence held a press conference as part of the Forum. There was laughter in response to one of them saying that they wouldn’t take over human jobs and that there was no need to worry about it.
Many workers across a variety of industries have expressed their worry and view robots as a threat because they worry that they will be replaced by these robots and lose their employment. In this regard, Goldman Sachs revealed the estimate that at least 1 in 4 jobs in Europe would be lost as a result of artificial intelligence in a paper titled, The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth. The corresponding number of jobs is at least 300 million.
Due to the absence of prerequisites for the absorption of technology, the impact will be less in Latin America and other rising economies.
Office, engineering, and legal-administrative positions are the ones most likely to be replaced. When technology is implemented into production processes, it typically takes care of the most time-consuming, difficult, and routine activities. Additionally, they constantly raise productivity and living standards.
What would happen to farmers and, by extension, the world’s food supply if autonomous irrigation systems didn’t exist? Without the availability of systems designed for these reasons, how would governments coordinate their security activities, exports and imports, and handle statistics on birthrates?
We cannot dispute that job losses will result from the integration of artificial intelligence into manufacturing processes since many of the skills that workers currently hold will become obsolete. But these technical developments are also and will continue to be responsible for millions of new jobs.
Businesses and academic institutions alike must support instructional strategies and materials that are focused on AI and emerging technologies. There will be job losses, but there will also be many new ones.
Additionally, we should be upbeat about how new technology and artificial intelligence will affect how people interact with one another. Robots carry out crucial activities that shield us from human error, such as automated tasks, extremely complex calculations, and difficult medical procedures. They can also turn into a crucial partner in the fight against the biggest issue we are now dealing with climate change.
The attribute that has allowed our species to survive—our thirst for knowledge and our drive to take on the uncharted—is precisely what we most need right now. To address the issues we are confronting, we will use all of our wit and imagination.
We can’t rely on the past to know what to do because none of the misery we are experiencing as a civilization has ever occurred at another point in history. Instead, we must turn to the future and place our faith in innovation.
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