"Artificial Intelligence and life in 2030: the one hundred year study on artificial intelligence"
Abstract
This report is the first in a series to be issued at regular intervals as a part of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100). As one consequence of the decision to focus on life in North American cities, military applications were deemed to be outside the scope of this initial report. This is not to minimize the importance of careful monitoring and deliberation about the implications of AI advances for defense and warfare, including potentially destabilizing developments and deployments. The report is designed to address four intended audiences. For the general public, it aims to provide an accessible, scientifically and technologically accurate portrayal of the current state of AI and its potential. For industry, the report describes relevant technologies and legal and ethical challenges, and may help guide resource allocation. The report is also directed to local, national, and international governments to help them better plan for AI in governance. Finally, the report can help AI researchers, as well as their institutions and funders, to set priorities and consider the ethical and legal issues raised by AI research and its applications. Given the unique nature of the One Hundred Year Study on AI, we expect that future generations of Standing Committees and Study Panels, as well as research scientists, policy experts, leaders in the private and public sectors, and the general public, will reflect on this assessment as they make new assessments of AI’s future. We hope that this first effort in the series stretching out before us will be useful for both its failures and successes in accurately predicting the trajectory and influences of AI. The Standing Committee is grateful to the members of the Study Panel for investing their expertise, perspectives, and significant time to the creation of this inaugural report. We especially thank Professor Peter Stone for agreeing to serve as chair of the study and for his wise, skillful, and dedicated leadership of the panel, its discussions, and creation of the report.
Key Passage
There are clear examples of industries in which digital technologies have had profound impacts, good and bad, and other sectors in which automation will likely make major changes in the near future. Many of these changes have been driven strongly by “routine” digital technologies, including enterprise resource planning, networking, information processing, and search. Understanding these changes should provide insights into how AI will affect future labor demand, including the shift in skill demands. To date, digital technologies have been affecting workers more in the skilled middle, such as travel agents, rather than the very lowest-skilled or highest skilled work. On the other hand, the spectrum of tasks that digital systems can do is evolving as AI systems improve, which is likely to gradually increase the scope of what is considered routine. AI is also creeping into high end of the spectrum, including professional services not historically performed by machines. To be successful, AI innovations will need to overcome understandable human fears of being marginalized. AI will likely replace tasks rather than jobs in the near term, and will also create new kinds of jobs. But the new jobs that will emerge are harder to imagine in advance than the existing jobs that will likely be lost. Changes in employment usually happen gradually, often without a sharp transition, a trend likely to continue as AI slowly moves into the workplace. A spectrum of effects will emerge, ranging from small amounts of replacement or augmentation to complete replacement. For example, although most of a lawyer’s job is not yet automated, AI applied to legal information extraction and topic modeling has automated parts of first-year lawyers’ jobs. In the not too distant future, a diverse array of job-holders, from radiologists to truck drivers to gardeners, may be affected. AI may also influence the size and location of the workforce. Many organizations and institutions are large because they perform functions that can be scaled only by adding human labor, either “horizontally” across geographical areas or “vertically” in management hierarchies. As AI takes over many functions, scalability no longer implies large organizations. Many have noted the small number of employees of some high profile internet companies, but not of others. There may be a natural scale of human enterprise, perhaps where the CEO can know everyone in the company. Through the creation of efficiently outsourced labor markets enabled by AI, enterprises may tend towards that natural size. (p.38)
Keywords
Artificial Intelligence, Future, Work Futures, Technology, Technological ShiftThemes
AutomationLinks to Reference
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