“A robot will never beat a human at chess,” that was what philosophy professor Hubert Dreyfus boldly stated in 1965. Only two years later, he was beaten by a MIT chess robot. During the recent years, robots have been encroaching on jobs that were considered to be only for humans, but do the advances in robotics and AI mean human jobs will become obsolete? According to Brittanica, the term AI “is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.” (Copeland). By this definition, the first artificial intelligence program was developed in 1955 by Herber Simon and Allen Newell. This program was capable of developing the proof for the foundation of modern math and logics (Principia Mathematica). Now, AI can do much more. Not only can it do math, but it can also create works of art and literature. Currently, advancing technology’s influence is certainly not negligible, and it has already replaced some repetitive jobs such as working in online customer service, or working in an assembly line. However, even if advancing technology has the potential to make some of us unemployable, jobs that require soft skills, physical dexterity, or great adaptability may never be replaced by AI and other forms of technology, and even if some jobs do get replaced, other jobs will rise up.

            First and foremost, while advancing technology may make some jobs obsolete, it will also create new jobs. For example, take the invention of Uber drive. According to brittanica.com, it was created in 2009 by Travell Cordell Kalanick, and Garret camp in San Francisco.(Volle)  In the online article from Skywell Software, Technology and Employment – Top 10 Jobs Created by Technology, the author suggests that although it may have made other taxi services less relevant, advancing technology has created many other jobs. The first job advancing technology has created would be jobs for drivers. This is a great second job for many people as anyone with a legal driver’s license and a car can apply as an Uber driver and earn some extra income. On the technical side, it has created jobs for the software programmers that help develop the platform, and the managers of the company. Or look at the invention of AirBnb. It may have decreased the popularity of hotels initially, however, it has created jobs for AirBnb hosts, the people who manage the AirBnb, such as the maids and maintenance people, and finally the people who work continuously to improve the AirBnb system. And finally, in the article Here’s why robots are actually going to increase human employment on the world economic forum we can see that in the year 1979, “there were only about 299,000 people working as accountants, bookkeepers, or auditors”.(Hanspal). Microsoft Excel was released in 1995, and after its release, one might think that they could do their own accounting, and that the accounting industry would go into decline. But no, only four years after Excel’s release, the amount of accounts rose to around 524,000. The article also mentioned ATMs (automatic teller machine), and as the name suggests, this machine automatically does what a teller previously did. “In 1970, there were about 250,000 bank tellers. The first automatic teller machine had been recently introduced. By 2019, there were about 400,000 ATMs installed in the U.S.—and the number of bank tellers had doubled.”(Hanspal)What happened was the analysts and tellers started doing more advanced work that required soft skills that ATMs didn’t have, for example developing relationships between the customer and the bank.  And although ATMs decreased the urban bank branch’s average of 21 tellers to only 13 tellers, ATMs made it cheaper to open a new bank branch, and the number of bank branches increased by about 40 percent. The net result was more bank tellers.

           Secondly, while AI and other forms of technology can create new jobs, AI is not skilled at adapting to unexpected problems such as those that can often occur in the construction industry.  According to the article Will robots and AI cause mass unemployment? Not necessarily, but they do bring other threats by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs , AI and other forms of technology do not “have a good adaptability when something unexpected happens” (UNdepartmentofsocialaffairs.gov). For example, some houses are now being 3D printed with concrete. As stated by architectural design educator Steward Hicks, when a home is built with bricks by humans, “the bricks can be within 20 mm of the actual designated area for the bricks and still be considered in the right place. But when 3-D printing a house, being even 25mm off would spell disaster”(Hicks). If the 3d printed house had some imperfections, the house would not stand because the 3d printer would not be able to compensate for the errors. The 3-D printer would not be able to adapt to problems the way a human builder could. For example, a human builder could compensate for the errors with good judgment and critical thinking. Therefore, technology isn’t better or faster than humans, so there will always be jobs that humans can do better and more efficiently than technology.

            Additionally AI and other types of technology do not have soft skills such as social skills, and creative thinking. For example, according to nexford.edu technology is not even close to replacing jobs like teachers. Repetitive tasks such as working in a production line have been automated.  Even tasks that require a bit more adaptability, such as customer service, have also been automated. (Rostron) However, teachers have to have very good social skills in order to properly communicate lessons to students and quickly evaluate the students’ learning condition and give personalized feedback. This has not yet been automated. According to thetechedvocate.org, teachers need to teach on an emotional level too, and “that kind of learning needs the human touch that only teachers can provide”. (Lynch) This shows how limited AI and other forms of technology are when communicating with humans. The same is true for writers., Works of literature are creativity and emotion put onto the page. Currently AI has not been able to write any form of literature that has become widely accepted as original and meaningful. This shows how limited AI is creatively. AI lacks emotion which is shown in large language models such as ChatGpt. This is because ChatGpt formulates its answers by analyzing large amounts of human created information, so literature written by AI is not original but rather a mix of millions of human voices, making it therefore irrelevant. AI is powerful, but it can still only facilitate creativity and not produce art successfully or other creative works on its own.

            Some people may argue that advancing technology has already replaced many repetitive human jobs, so advancing technology will soon make human jobs obsolete. According to the CNN article AI is replacing human tasks faster than you think, in a survey conducted by the Duke University and the federal reserve bank of Atlanta, “Nearly 60% of all companies (and 84% of large companies) surveyed said that over the past year they have already leaned on software, equipment or technology including AI to automate tasks employees previously did. The survey was conducted between May 13 and June 3.“ However, according to the same CNN article “Reid Hoffman, the billionaire investor and co-founder of LinkedIn, told CNN that AI will likely disrupt some jobs but not in the immediate future.” (Egan) Hoffman also wrote a book with the assistance of ChatGpt-4, Impromptu. This book repeatedly stressed that “for a number of years, AI will be the co-pilot, not the pilot.” (Hoffman) Hoffman also said that  the introduction of AI is “job transformation. Human jobs will be replaced — but will be replaced by other humans using AI.” This shows that human jobs are not going to be replaced by AI alone, and AI poses no threat in completely making human work obsolete. In this statement, we can see that this reason is not valid, as humans will still be working, just with AI making working more efficient. 

            AI will never replace humans completely because advancing technology will create new jobs, advancing technology is not good at adapting to problems, and because AI models do not have good soft skills. While jobs are eliminated using AI, companies like Uber, AirBnB, and Microsoft have added new jobs to use that new technology. Advancing technology does not have the  ability to creatively adapt when a problem occurs, where the tiniest of imperfections could lead to disaster. Finally, AI generated artwork and literature is not original, and lacks creativity and emotion when compared to artwork and literature created by humans. While many people believe that AI has already replaced millions of human jobs, however, the majority of those jobs were replaced by humans with AI not AI alone. AI poses no real threat to the human workforce and no one needs to worry, as long as we are willing to adapt, AI will always be the copilot, and humans will always be in the driver’s seat.

 

Works cited: 

1. Copeland, B.J, “Artificial intelligence.” Britannica, May 6, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/additional-info#history
2. Volle, Adam, “Uber.” Britannica, 2 March 2023,https://www.britannica.com/money/Uber
3. “Technology and Employment – Top 10 Jobs Created by Technology”, Skywell.software, https://skywell.software/blog/top-10-jobs-created-by-technology/#:~:text=Technology%20and%20Employment%20%E2%80%93%20Top%2010%20Jobs%20Created,…%208%208.%20Drone%20Operator%20…%20More%20items
4. Hanspal, Amar, “Here’s why robots are actually going to improve human employment.”, 26, February, 2021, WEforum https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/world-economic-forum-automation-create-jobs-employment-robots/
5. “Will robots and AI cause mass unemployment? Not necessarily, but they do bring other threats.” UnitedNationsDepartmentofEconomicandSocialAffairs, https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/policy/will-robots-and-ai-cause-mass-unemployment-not-necessarily-but-they-do-bring-other-threats.html
6. Hicks, Steward “Why 3-D Printing Buildings Leads to Problems” YouTube, 30 May 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhAwPFIUF_4
7. Rostron Mark, “How Will Artificial Intelligence Affect Jobs 2024-2030.” Nexford, 10 January 2024, https://www.nexford.edu/insights/how-will-ai-affect-jobs
8. Lynch, Matthew “WHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL NEVER REPLACE TEACHERS.” thetechedvocate.org, 1 March 2028,
9. Egan, Matt, “AI is replacing jobs faster than you think.” CNN, 20 June 2024, https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/20/business/ai-jobs-workers-replacing/index.html
10. Hoffman, Reid, “Impromptu.” impromptu.com, 15 March 2023

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