Stop panicking about AI. Start preparing
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Solving fiendish maths problems, making complex medical diagnoses, conjuring up new software in moments: the feats of generative AI get more impressive by the day. But anxiety about its social consequences is mounting, too.
Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the imf, has warned of a job-crushing “tsunami". Sir Demis Hassabis, boss of Google DeepMind, a leading ai lab, says he would support a slowing of innovation to allow society to adapt. Jamie Dimon, high priest of American finance, says governments should ban lay-offs if it “saves society".
The scene seems set for wrenching upheaval. The course of AI is uncertain, obviously. Yet the latest series of Boss Class, our podcast on management, shows that there are good reasons to think society has more scope to adapt than these luminaries suggest.
It takes time for a new technology to diffuse from the cutting-edge to the office cubicle. Firms and governments should use the breathing space to help those most at risk of being displaced. So far labour markets seem unruffled.
Service jobs are most exposed to generative ai, yet in America the number of white-collar jobs has gone up by 3m since ChatGPT was launched, while blue-collar jobs have stayed flat. Employment has risen even in areas that have been keen adopters, such as coding. One reason for the slow economic impact is the technology’s “jagged frontier": it excels at some tasks but then confidently spouts nonsense, or struggles to count the number of “r"s in “strawberry".
This unpredictability means companies and workers need to spend time working out where to apply ai. Moreover, business processes don’t change overnight. Electricity was first harnessed commercially in the 1880s, but
. Read on livemint.com