Is human workforce replacement with artificial intelligence a real issue?
With the rise of artificial intelligence which has taken all by storm, one question rises inevitably – is human workforce replacement with #artificialintelligence foundation models a real thing?
We have witnessed the strike of the screen writers guild in Hollywood in response to the increased use of #AImodels in order to cut labor costs. Now the screen actors guild also authorized a strike in response to increasing concerns over the unknown impact of #AI foundation models on the safety of jobs in creative industries.
As Guardian recently reported, “Germany’s Bild tabloid, the biggest-selling newspaper in Europe, has announced a €100m cost-cutting program that will lead to about 200 redundancies, and warned staff that it expects to make further editorial cuts due to “the opportunities of artificial intelligence”.”
A large Indian startup implemented an #AIChatBot to handle customer support inquiries, resulting in the layoff of 90% of their support staff due to improved efficiency. This was motivated by increased financial benefits for the company.
These are just some of the very recent news regarding workforce replacement. For the first time, white-collar jobs are in jeopardy.
Artificial intelligence could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs, a report by investment bank Goldman Sachs says. It could replace as much as a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe but may also mean new jobs and a productivity boom on the other hand.
Forbes reported that “Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and #OpenAI found some educated white-collar workers earning up to $80,000 a year are the most likely to be affected by workforce automation.”
In reality, we have witnessed the effect of the introduction of #AImodels to various areas of work – marketing, online support, finance and banking, and even legal services.
What is a common denominator to all these affected services are two things – the first one is that all these jobs are white collar jobs, whereas the second one is that they represent the bottom part of the white collar jobs in each respective industry which do not demand high set of skills, but the ones which could easily be replaced with no-thinking #AImodels. What does that mean?
For example – in the news industry, investigative reporters’ jobs will not be jeopardized. In the marketing industry, top creative jobs will not be influenced. In the legal services industry, litigators’ jobs for example (but not only them) will not be in jeopardy with replacement, since it requires a different set of skills that #AIgenarative models can`t mimic. Why this cannot be mimicked – because it requires critical and strategic thinking and taking an approach to matters which requires a kind of thinking of which the generative #AImodels are (still) not capable of.
Naturally, there are additional (above all regulatory) issues in this respect, which are governed by some of the highest legal acts in each country such as Constitutions. For example – the right to a natural judge and fair trial, are some of the fundamental rights embedded into the foundations of the rule of law and protected by international conventions (e.g. European Convention on Human Rights and Basic Freedoms).
From all that has been said, we can conclude that human workforce replacement indeed is a real thing on one hand. On the other, there is a promise of new jobs to be created, but we are still not there yet.
But let`s not forget what is important here. This is not just about the pursuit of profit and cutting costs (which might be quite tempting), what might be overlooked. This is about some of the fundamental rights, such as the right to work even if this is not an unfamiliar process in human history. Similar things occurred in each of the stages of the industrial revolution.
However, this does not justify simply viewing this matter as solely a matter of the market and profit. This is also a matter of law. Constitutional and Labor Law to be specific. This means that the regulatory framework in this particular field is still lacking and behind current technological development.
This recent development is a call to action (together with recent trends which we have pointed out), as we have seen in Hollywood, as this is a matter of collective bargaining where unions have an important role to play in order to incentivize the governments and international community progress with the adoption of the laws and other regulations which will set the rules of play so to speak.
Best practices in the application and use of #generativeAImodels should be examined and adopted, such as defining the purpose and conditions of the use of #generativeAImodels in order to set fair working conditions and secure the basic right to work.
By Ivan Štrbac
