Now that we've gone through the risks and threats of AI, let's check what are the possibilities of it.
Artificial Intelligence can provide great relief in our day to day life, for example, AI can do various repetitive tasks. In a nutshell, AI learns the work once and repeats it as many times as desired. This way we can reduce the workload from dull and repetitive tasks. AI has replaced many labor level jobs and has lessened the operational costs for the industries. AI has increased the productivity of the industries by doing these repetitive tasks.
Nowadays the amount of data that is generated by humans and machines combined is far greater than humans' ability to absorb it. Artificial intelligence forms the basis for all machine learning. AI is extremely efficient in calculating huge amounts of data and making good decisions based on that data. For this reason, AI is the foundational future of business decision making.
Below you can see a few different jobs, that are likely to be done by AI in a future.
In a previous chapter, “AI and Jobs”, we learned how AI has changed and will continue to be changing the jobs in many different fields. Of all the work currently in the world about one half is said to have potential of being replaced by automation in the long run. Many occupations, such as those mentioned in the flipcard element above, would disappear completely and of those occupations that remain, in 60% there is at least some tasks that could be automated. Having this potential does not however mean that all that work would very soon be replaced, or all those jobs would disappear. The changes will also happen in a different pace in different places. The change is faster in those regions where labor costs are higher and thus there would be more potential to increase productivity.
But the occupations disappearing and manual work being replaced with machines, will not leave all these people without work in the future. As has been the case also in the history, also now there will be completely new occupations and work tasks that need employees. Automation improves the general productivity which will grow the economies. Growing economies will increase the investments which, in turn, increases the total volume of work and thus also the demand of manpower. And still, in most cases, the goal of using AI is merely to help people instead of replacing them.
Therefore, even though it's inevitable that technology will displace some people from their jobs, it will also have positive effects, like being able to focus on personal passions. Many leading economists believe that even if unemployment does arise, our governments are able to develop solutions that allow workers to continue living happy, dignified lives. Advanced AI is likely to be far less of a threat than people suggest.
Many different researchers and institutes are continuously monitoring and forecasting the change taking place now and in the future. Usually, the results comply with the findings made by a research published in 2018 by PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), an international auditing and consulting company.
The picture shows how the research suggests the job market will be changed in the future in Britain. John Hawksworth, the chief economist at PwC, said: "Major new technologies, from steam engines to computers, displace some existing jobs but also generate large productivity gains. This reduces prices and increases real income and spending levels, which in turn creates demand for additional workers."
The estimated increment in the health care and hospitality sectors are explained by the change in the UK demography and by the increased income and free time of people. The other sectors growing; scientific and technical, communication, and education, all reflect the increased demand of highly skilled people in the fields that are relevant in implementing the automatization.
For a person currently planning the future career, this forecast gives high motivation to seek for an education in some these growing sectors. Focusing on nursing or in technical skills should not be a bad bet for anyone. On that path, this exact course you are currently studying, is a good example of skillsets that might prove to be valuable.
The above discussion mainly focused on the change in the different fields in numbers i.e., numbers of lost and gained jobs or numbers of lost and gained occupations. Let us next have a look at the qualitative change within some of these fields, how is the work going to change and what kinds of new opportunities AI will provide?
In software production the applications of AI will help in the actual coding work in many ways. By providing suggestions, AI can assist in writing the code and thus increase the productivity while making the process easier and faster. The code also becomes cleaner and has less bugs. Less bugs means that there is a lower need to fix the code which, again, leads to faster production time. And the inevitable bugs that appear can also be easier and faster to identify with AI than with traditional methods.
AI can also be utilized in application server management. By following the server performance, it can learn to improve the server operations. It may also be used to improve customer service and to both forecast and optimize the use of the hardware and human resources. AI would be superior in fraud detection. With historical data available, machine learning can find patterns of fraudulent behavior, and these findings can then be used to implement systems that makes the systems more challenging for the cyber criminals in the future. And with the same logic, AI may learn how to improve the business processes of the company or even generate completely new business strategies which would then also serve the other fields of the business.
In the field of health care, AI is widely applied already now and there will be a huge potential in this field in the future. AI can be applied in diagnostics to, for example, identify tumors from medical images. Machine vision could be coupled with augmented reality to assist clinical surgery, via medical robotics and telesurgery this could be applicable also in distant rural locations. Machine learning applications that combine different kinds of medical data, such as genetic information, medical history, patient lifestyle and environment, and data provided by wearable devices, to provide personally tailored suggestions to prevent future health problems or for the treatment of diagnosed illnesses will also grow in numbers.
AI can also help to improve the overall quality control of medical processes by detecting, or hopefully preventing, errors and inefficient activities in different levels. Validity of medical prescriptions or diagnosis process could be verified, ineffective processes could be identified, and national level strategies defined using AI. All these applications would be of a big help for the health care administrators and service providers.
Use of Internet of Things (IoT), machine vision and robotics will also change the sectors traditionally more based on man powered work. Continuous and automated quality control based on advanced algorithms analyzing the images taken by cheap online cameras can reach construction sites, agriculture and manufacturing work, for example. Construction site safety can be brought to a completely new level by autonomous drones monitoring the sites and alerting in case workers without protective helmets or places with a potential falling or electrocution hazard are being spotted. Self-driving construction machinery can overtake some repetitive tasks such as pouring concrete or laying bricks freeing the man power to other tasks requiring more creativity.