Author: Rob Matheson | MIT News Office<\/p>\n
In opening yesterday\u2019s AI and the Work of the Future Congress, MIT Professor Daniela Rus presented diverging views of how artificial intelligence will impact jobs worldwide.<\/p>\n
By automating certain menial tasks, experts think AI is poised to improve human quality of life, boost profits, and create jobs, said Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.<\/p>\n
Rus then quoted a World Economic Forum study estimating AI could help create 133 million new jobs worldwide over the next five years. Juxtaposing this optimistic view, however, she noted a recent survey that found about two-thirds of Americans believe machines will soon rob humans of their careers. \u201cSo, who is right? The economists, who predict greater productivity and new jobs? The technologists, who dream of creating better lives? Or the factory line workers who worry about unemployment?\u201d Rus asked. \u201cThe answer is, probably all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her remarks kicked off an all-day conference in Kresge Auditorium that convened experts from industry and academia for panel discussions and informal talks about preparing humans of all ages and backgrounds for a future of AI automation in the workplace. The event was co-sponsored by CSAIL, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), and the MIT Work of the Future Task Force, an Institute-wide effort launched in 2018 that aims to understand and shape the evolution of jobs during an age of innovation.<\/p>\n
Presenters were billed as \u201cleaders and visionaries\u201d rigorously measuring technological impact on enterprise, government, and society, and generating solutions. Apart from Rus, who also moderated a panel on dispelling AI myths, speakers included Chief Technology Officer of the United States Michael Kratsios; executives from Amazon, Nissan, Liberty Mutual, IBM, Ford, and Adobe; venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs; representatives of nonprofits and colleges; journalists who cover AI issues; and several MIT professors and researchers.<\/p>\n
Rus, a self-described \u201ctechnology optimist,\u201d drove home a point that echoed throughout all discussions of the day: AI doesn\u2019t automate jobs,\u00a0<\/em>it automates tasks. Rus quoted a recent McKinsey Global Institute study that estimated 45 percent of tasks that humans are paid to do can now be automated. But, she said, humans can adapt to work in concert with AI \u2014\u00a0meaning job tasks may change dramatically, but jobs may not disappear entirely. \u201cIf we make the right choices and the right investments, we can ensure that those benefits get distributed widely across our workforce and our planet,\u201d Rus said.<\/p>\n Avoiding the \u201cjob-pocalypse\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Common topics throughout the day included reskilling veteran employees to use AI technologies; investing heavily in training young students in AI through tech apprenticeships, vocational programs, and other education initiatives; ensuring workers can make livable incomes; and promoting greater inclusivity in tech-based careers. The hope is to avoid, as one speaker put it, a \u201cjob-pocalypse,\u201d where most humans will lose their jobs to machines.<\/p>\n A panel moderated by David Mindell, the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing and a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, focused on how AI technologies are changing workflow and skills, especially within sectors resistant to change. Mindell asked panelists for specific examples of implementing AI technologies into their companies.<\/p>\n In response, David Johnson, vice president of production and engineering at Nissan, shared an anecdote about pairing an MIT student with a 20-year employee in developing AI methods to autonomously predict car-part quality. In the end, the veteran employee became immersed in the technology and is now using his seasoned expertise to deploy it in other areas, while the student learned more about the technology\u2019s real-world applications. \u201cOnly through this synergy, when you purposely pair these people with a common goal, can you really drive the skills forward \u2026 for mass new technology adoption and deployment,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n In a panel about shaping public policies to ensure technology benefits society \u2014 which included U.S. CTO Kratsios \u2014 moderator Erik Brynjolfsson, director of IDE and a professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management, got straight to the point: \u201cPeople have been dancing around this question: Will AI destroy jobs?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, it will \u2014 but not to the extent that people presume,\u201d replied MIT Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu. AI, he said, will mostly automate mundane operations in white-collar jobs, which will free up humans to refine their creative, interpersonal, and other high-level skills for new roles. Humans, he noted, also won\u2019t be stuck doing low-paying jobs, such as labeling data for machine-learning algorithms.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not the future of work,\u201d he said. \u201cThe hope is we use our amazing creativity and all these wonderful and technological platforms to create meaningful jobs in which humans can use their flexibility, creativity, and all the things \u2026 machines won\u2019t be able to do \u2014 at least in the next 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Kratsios emphasized a need for public and private sectors to collaborate to reskill workers. Specifically, he pointed to the Pledge to the America\u2019s Worker, the federal initiative that now has 370 U.S. companies committed to retraining roughly 4 million American workers for tech-based jobs over the next five years.<\/p>\n Responding to an audience question about potential public policy changes, Kratsios echoed sentiments of many panelists, saying education policy should focus on all levels of education, not just college degrees. \u201cA vast majority of our policies, and most of our departments and agencies, are targeted toward coaxing people toward a four-year degree,\u201d Kratsios said. \u201cThere are incredible opportunities for Americans to live and work and do fantastic jobs that don\u2019t require four-year degrees. So, [a change is] thinking about using the same pool of resources to reskill, or retrain, or [help students] go to vocational schools.\u201d<\/p>\n Inclusivity and underserved populations<\/strong><\/p>\n Entrepreneurs at the event explained how AI can help create diverse workforces. For instance, a panel about creating economically and geographically diverse workforces, moderated by Devin Cook, executive producer of IDE\u2019s Inclusive Innovation Challenge, included Radha Basu, who founded Hewlett Packard\u2019s operations in India in the 1970s. In 2012, Basu founded iMerit, which hires employees \u2014 half are young women and more than 80 percent come from underserved populations \u2014\u00a0to provide AI services for computer vision, machine learning, and other applications.<\/p>\n A panel hosted by Paul Osterman, co-director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research and an MIT Sloan professor, explored how labor markets are changing in the face of technological innovations. Panelist Jacob Hsu is CEO of Catalyte, which uses an AI-powered assessment test to predict a candidate\u2019s ability to succeed as a software engineer, and hires and trains those who are most successful. Many of their employees don\u2019t have four-year degrees, and their ages range from anywhere from 17 to 72.<\/p>\n A \u201cmedia spotlight\u201d session, in which journalists discussed their reporting on the impact of AI on the workplace and the world, included David Fanning, founder and producer of the investigative documentary series FRONTLINE, which recently ran a documentary titled \u201cIn the Era of AI.\u201d Fanning briefly discussed how, during his investigations, he learned about the profound effect AI is having on workplaces in the developing world, which rely heavily on manual labor, such as manufacturing lines.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens as automation expands, the manufacturing ladder that was opened to people in developing countries to work their way out of rural poverty \u2014 all that manufacturing gets replaced by machines,\u201d Fanning said. \u201cWill we end up across the world with people who have nowhere to go? Will they become the new economic migrants we have to deal with in the age of AI?\u201d<\/p>\n Education: The great counterbalance<\/strong><\/p>\n Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director for the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future and of the MIT Industrial Performance Center, and Andrew McAfee, co-director of IDE and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, closed out the conference and discussed next steps.<\/p>\n Reynolds said the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, over the next year, will further study how AI is being adopted, diffused, and implemented across the U.S., as well as issues of race and gender bias in AI. In closing, she charged the audience with helping tackle the issues: \u201cI would challenge everybody here to say, \u2018What on Monday morning is [our] organization doing in respect to this agenda?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In paraphrasing economist Robert Gordon, McAfee reemphasized the shifting nature of jobs in the era of AI: \u201cWe don\u2019t have a job quantity problem, we have a job quality problem.\u201d<\/p>\n AI may generate more jobs and company profits, but it may also have numerous negative effects on employees. Proper education and training are keys to ensuring the future workforce is paid well and enjoys a high quality of life, he said: \u201cTech progress, we\u2019ve known for a long time, is an engine of inequality. The great counterbalancing force is education.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"