CEO of giant tech company Google, Sundar Pichai in a recent interview has urged members of society to adapt to the rapid development of AI technologies.
Sundar statement is coming after he hinted that society isn’t prepared for the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which he feels could pose a negative impact on their lives.
While speaking in a 60 minutes interview with CBS, Sundar said that society needs to adapt to it already, adding that jobs that would be disrupted by AI would include knowledge workers, including writers, accountants, architects, and software engineers.
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In his words,
“This is going to impact every product across every company. For example, you could be a radiologist, if you think about five to ten years from now, you’re going to have an AI collaborator with you. You come in the morning, let’s say you have a hundred things to go through, it may say, these are the most serious cases you need to look at first.”
While warning on the consequences of AI, Pichai said that the scale of the problem of disinformation and fake news and images will be much bigger, adding that it could cause harm. His company Google has launched a document outlining recommendations for regulating AI, but the tech CEO stated that society must quickly adapt to regulation, laws to punish abuse, and treaties among nations to make AI safe for the world as well as rules that Align with human values including morality.
When asked whether society is prepared for Google’s chatbot Bard, he said, “On one hand, I feel no, because the pace at which we can think and adapt as societal institutions, compared to the pace at which the technology is evolving, there seems to be a mismatch.”
However, he disclosed that he is optimistic because compared with other technologies in the past, the number of people who have started worrying about the implications did so early on.
It is interesting to note that individuals have continued to express fears and concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will affect the world. Those fears include robots taking jobs away from people, AI’s being used to spread misinformation, etc. However, tech experts have disclosed that it is short-sighted to ignore the many amazing ways AI could improve society.
With the rapid advancement of AI technology recently, which has seen several companies roll out different AI products, individuals are urged to embrace it quickly as posited by Google’s CEO as not doing so can pose a serious challenge.
One advantage of embracing AI technology is that combining the best of human skill with the best of automation can enable individuals to be more efficient, creative, and productive. With future jobs becoming automated, only those who arm themselves with relevant AI skills will thrive, unlike who due to fear failed to get familiar with the technology.
Artificial intelligence will no doubt cause the workforce to evolve. Despite concerns for the loss of jobs to machines, the real challenge is for humans to find their passion with new responsibilities that require their uniquely human abilities. According to PwC, 7 million existing jobs will be replaced by AI in the UK from 2017-2037, but 7.2 million jobs could be created. This uncertainty and the changes to how some will make a living could be challenging.
While there will be many learning experiences and challenges to be faced as AI technology continues to roll out into new applications, the expectation will be that artificial intelligence will generally have a more positive than negative impact on society.