06/26/2017

Why "How Many Jobs Will AI Kill?" Is The Wrong Question

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

Over the past few years, we've developed artificially intelligent machines that can do many things that used to require human minds: understanding speech, diagnosing disease, checking the terms of a contract, designing a mechanical part from scratch, even coming up with new scientific hypotheses that are supported by subsequent research. As this new software is embedded in hardware we’ll get self-driving cars, trucks and combines; delivery and inspection drones; and robots of many kinds.

These technologies are improving more quickly than even their creators would have predicted at the start of the decade, and the fact that the world's best players of both the Asian strategy game go and no limit heads up Texas hold-em poker are now AI systems indicates just how deeply they’re encroaching into human territory.

So, shouldn't we be preparing ourselves for massive AI-induced technological unemployment? A widely cited 2015 analysis by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University found that 47 percent of current jobs in the US were susceptible to computerization. And some jobs look especially ripe for automation. As self-driving technology advances, it seems likely that many of America's approximately 3.5 million truck drivers could find themselves out of a job.

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