Is AI Out To Take Your Job Any Time Soon?

As humans gradually embrace and adopt AI systems, not all jobs will be affected the same way. Some jobs are being completely replaced already, and others are being partially replaced, while others may never be replaced.

For instance AI have already found applications in the agricultural fields, such as in the robot developed by Dr Martin Stoelen, a lecturer in robotics at Plymouth University. This autonomous machine is expected to pick more than 25,000 raspberries a day, outpacing human workers by a huge margin.

Not only will robots replace workers, they will also become bosses to humans. When a customer service representative at the call centre of the insurance giant MetLife talks to a customer over the phone, they are monitored by an AI displayed in a little blue box at the bottom right area of their screen, which tells them how they are doing.

AI are making diagnoses better than human doctors in some cases. To further emphasise the point, According to a study conducted by researchers from Imperial College London and Google Health, an AI program has been developed that can identify breast cancer from routine scans, with greater accuracy than its human counterparts.

If AI can perform all these feats, then which job is safe? The takeaway however, in all these examples, is that the AI in each case is performing a singular task really well, but cannot for example, prepare you a meal after physically going grocery shopping for the ingredients.

Generally, the hardest jobs for machines to perform, are those that take years of training for humans to excel at. These often involve intuitive decision making, complex physical environments, or abstract thinking: all things computers struggle with. The further away your job description is from the preceding statement, the more likely it is that your job will be the first to go.