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The Demerits of AI on People’s Employments, Privacy, And The Socio-economic Impacts

Necessity is inarguably the mother of these inventions which have led to the creation of artificial intelligence (AI). Buchanan argues that artificial intelligence originated from the fields of philosophy, fiction, and imagination. He points out Homer’s description of mechanical tripods that served the gods at a diner which perhaps is an allusion to robots as he envisioned them. Notably, AI has taken a foothold with the recent advancements in science, electronics, and engineering in the past fifty years. It can however not be disputed that early philosophers such as Descartes had given a passing thought to AI in their works as they sought to understand humans better. Inarguably, it works better than humans such as computers in keeping records. Day to day, these inventions have displaced the need of human beings in the workplace. The negative effect of AI has taken a huge toll on people’s lives, privacy, fewer employment opportunities, social and economic disparities, and forcing people to adapt to the new norm; thus, the need to be equipped with new sophisticated skills.

It is evident that with the emergence of artificial intelligence, there are job losses and the statistics of job displacement will increase. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has a 40% of the people underwent job displacement and giving way to the automation of jobs, and that 5% of the jobs will be fully automatable by 2030 which would mean more job displacement (Reisinger, para 1). The sector at most risk would be the agricultural sector. In 1990-1950, jobs in the agricultural sector from 40% to 10% employment rate (Skynettoday, para 3). Initially, farm owners would employ hundreds of people to plow acres of land; thus, taking months to finish preparing the land. With AI, some machines are used to cultivate the land and only need one human being to operate them leading to a large let-down of employees. Nonetheless, there are combined harvesters who work harder than humans, do more complex works with the farm such as harvesting, removing the husk, compacting the dried part into hay, and putting aside the food part simultaneously. Such a process would take a lot of human beings and time to do it. Therefore, most business owners in the agricultural sector would opt for technological assistance rather than human beings; thus, rendering many people jobless.

The issue of reduced privacy is likely to be aggravated by the prevalence of AI use. AI has been applied by various organizations and governments to spy on individuals. Facial recognition software as well as locational trackers monitor a person’s movements and social interactions closely. It gives the organization observing them a peek into their lives. The individual who has been watched may become conscious and paranoid. It may hinder their physical involvement in certain activities which may be used to profile them or be misinterpreted in countries with strict laws concerning issues such as terrorism and sexuality (Liang, Remanauskas & Kurenkov, para 44). In the future, likely, every person’s private information from financial records, medical records to personal preferences will be stored in a server somewhere from whence other parties can obtain the necessary clearance and use it to attack or harm the individual. In recent days, there were concerns that google may easily disclose people’s information when they are still in incognito tabs. The emergence of AI has stripped people of their privacy at some level.

There is social and economic destabilization due to disparities in job displacements and replacements. There would not be an equal distribution of job displacements across gender, economic activity, ethnicities, age, and region. According to the National Council on Compensation Insurance reveals that among the 6.9% of people who will be displaced by 2024, most of them will be from the agricultural and its related sectors (Burkhardt, para 2). People from rural areas are more likely to be more affected than those living in urban areas because their livelihoods depend mostly on agriculture. Developing countries would take a bigger hit than the developed countries because there are more diversification and work augmentation in developed countries. Increased autorotation would lead to increased employment of human resources. For instance, there would be 100 people laid off when a machine is brought to do their work but one person would be employed to handle the machine. Though 99 people have lost their jobs, one person gets the job. How about bringing in 99 more machines and every other person gets to work at that company? However, the company would require more capital to bring in more than 99 machines in which developed countries can initiate that and developing countries are unable. This scenario leaves 99 people unemployed in a company in a country and most people would still be employed and earning a wage in the developed country thus widening the gap between these two types of countries. There would be a difference in social and economic levels between people because job displacement and replacement processes do not favor everyone.

Due to job loss, most people would settle for decreased wages to secure employment. According to SkyNet Today News, one robot reduces the wage of the employed by 0.37% because it is more efficient and works tirelessly (Liang, Remanauskas & Kurenkov, para 76). A company would not only have one robot; there would be numerous robots thus bringing up the percentage in which people’s salaries would decrease. Why would a company chief executive officer still employ people, and paying them the same amount of money when there is a machine that can work ten times better than them? However, the need for human resources at some point to maintain and handle the machines would lead to some employment opportunities but at a lower wage. Most people would settle for that because they have no other option. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, most people would earn 30% below their previous salaries after being displaced from their workplaces (Liang, Remanauskas & Kurenkov, para 77). Better half than nothing; thus, people would take up the low paying jobs to accommodate them while they look forward to advancing their skills and abilities for the higher-paying jobs, or looking for an alternative to working in a non-automatable job sector.

The use of AI leads to the elimination of low-skilled workers and having only people with sophisticated skills; thus, widening the gap between the rich and the poor. In an oxford study, students learning more sophisticated skills in higher education centers such as learning robotics and programming pay more fees than those studying agricultural sciences (Burkhardt, para 3). Nonetheless, without student loans, scholarships, and bursaries in America, only the rich students would be able to learn these sophisticated skills, and not all underprivileged children are given loans and grants. Most of them would turn to low skilled jobs like farming and the hospitality industry. However, these are the sectors that are at risk for full automation by 2030, therefore, many of these low skilled workers would lose their jobs (Burkhardt, para 44). The rich would comfortably educate their children to get sophisticated skills for these non-automatable jobs and the poor would learn skills that would sustain them to survive. The gap between the rich and the poor would still widen because of the elimination of the low skill labor by AI.

However, with increased AI, there would be increased jobs and a need to learn these skills. There cannot be fully automated cars in the world because the cars need to be maintained and driven in the cities and more complex roads (Reese, para 55). Self-driven cars can easily work on highways where there are less traffic and fewer complexities. The head of Uber notes that there is more to taxi work than just driving people to their destinations. The driver should engage people, help them load and unload their luggage, and service the car. All these tasks need a human being there as a car would not do that; it would only drive itself. As much as there would a lot of layoffs, with increased machines, there is an increased need to have a human being to handle the machines. Therefore, the jobs are not completely disappearing but evolving. Hereafter, there is a need to learn these skills.

AI has taken and will take a negative turn for events on some people. As much as many people would still praise the possibilities created by artificial intelligence, and how it has made people richer and skills becoming more sophisticated, some people would lose their jobs, and their privacy. There would be a disparity in the social and political stability of different societies, gender, and countries when people lose their jobs. The different economies would handle differently the job displacement. People will live at lower ages than what they expected because they have no other alternative other than to adapt. Nevertheless, the low-skilled laborers will face the cut more than those with sophisticated skills; bearing in mind, the richer people can take these sophisticated classes more than the poorer people thus widening the gap. On the bright side, there will be increased jobs.

Work Cited

Burkhardt, Michael. “The Impact of AI on Inequality, Job Automation, and Skills of the Future.” Towards data science. 15 April 2019. https://towardsdatascience.com/the-impact-of-ai-on-inequality-job-automation-and-skills-of-the-future-fe89c21e34bc

Liang, Jacky., Remanauskas, Ben., & Kurenkov, Andrey. “Job Loss Due To AI- How Bad Is It Going To Be”. SkyNet Today. 4 February 2019. https://www.skynettoday.com/editorials/ai-automation-job-loss

Reese, Bryon. “AI Will Create Millions More Jobs Than It Will Destroy. Here’s How”. SingularityHub. 1 January 2019. https://singularityhub.com/2019/01/01/ai-will-create-millions-more-jobs-than-it-will-destroy-heres-how/

Reisinger, Don. “A.I. Expert Says Automation Could Replace 40% of Jobs in 15 Years”. Fortune. 10 January 2019. https://fortune.com/2019/01/10/automation-replace-jobs/