What would such an AI-augmented future look like? It would seem that such a resilient AI-augmented workforce could also render a large part of the human population redundant. What happens after the pandemics then? Wouldn’t this create another crisis where people’s jobs are displaced?
Some jobs will inevitably be replaced by AI in the immediate future. But this will happen, and it has happened with every technological innovation in human history. The effect is more dramatic with AI because it is a general technology that is very versatile and can be applied in many different ways across many business domains.
However, as I look further into the future, I am constantly reminded that we should not use today’s standard to make a judgment about what may be a wildly different future.
In a more distant future, jobs may no longer be required for the survival and well-being of individuals. This may sound farfetched, but it’s not implausible. Numerous countries have already been experimenting with Universal Basic Income. Moreover, humans have dramatically reduced the amount of time they spend working ever since the Industrial Revolution due to the efficiency we gained through the employment of mechanical machines. It’s conceivable this trend could progress further with the help of intelligent machines.
In this distant future, AI and robots could automate many of the crucial operations that are necessary for a society to function without too much human supervision.
AI can not only help us build a more resilient economy able to withstand a pandemic like coronavirus, it may even eliminate our dependency on an economy altogether. We are a long way away from this utopian future, but I believe we can get there with the help of AI.
In the meantime, stay healthy and live to witness the AI-augmented future.
Wu, M. (2020, March 19). Can AI Help Us Build a More Resilient Economy in the Face of COVID-19? Retrieved from https://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/can-ai-help-us-build-a-more-resilient-economy-in-the-face-of-covid-19/
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