The Rise Of Artificial Intelligence: “Mass Employment To End”

A robot and artificial intelligence revolution is on the horizon, a new report has warned, and the rise of AI will lead to mass unemployment as machines take over jobs that people currently perform. The 300-page Bank of America Merrill Lynch report says as artificial intelligence continues to rise, jobs across multiple industries will be wiped out. The report predicts that 47% of workers in the US will have their jobs replaced by robots. Some have noted that these warnings were used in the past. The rise of computers in the 1970s and 80s would lead to mass unemployment, many warned, but this never came to pass.

Others think the so-called robot revolution could be different.

“The poster child for automation is agriculture,” says Calum Chace, author of Surviving AI and the novelPandora’s Brain. “In 1900, 40 [percent] of the US labor force worked in agriculture. By 1960, the figure was a few per cent. And yet people had jobs; the nature of the jobs had changed.”

“But then again, there were 21 million horses in the US in 1900. By 1960, there were just three million. The difference was that humans have cognitive skills – we could learn to do new things. But that might not always be the case as machines get smarter and smarter.”

Artificial intelligence is already being used to replace some tasks, even in typically white collar professions. The Associated Press used an automated system to write earnings reports from thousands of American companies, work that was once done by journalists.

Forms of artificial intelligence have also been implemented in technology, with advancements like self-driving cars and Apple’s personal assistant, Siri.

Toyota has also added artificial intelligence research and development to its business objectives, investing $1 billion for a five-year effort to develop AI at its Toyota Research Institute in Silicon Valley.