+34
The labour market is in a state of hush, with people waiting for the impact of artificial intelligence. While tech companies make headlines with AI-driven lay-offs, the rate of actual change in the labour market is low. The obsession with forecasting AI's impact has become a cottage industry, with technical mapping exercises predicting which jobs are most exposed to automation. However, these predictions vary greatly, and the metaphors used to describe AI's impact, such as the tsunami, can be misleading. Weizenbaum's work from the 1970s suggests that the most important issues are ethical, and that we need to think about what kind of world we want to create, rather than just forecasting and preparing for the worst.
It's as if everyone is holding their breath and waiting for what they have been told is coming but, as Pope Leo says, we all have a responsibility to shape the future.
Will I have a job tomorrow? Will the market crash? Why does OpenAI need a bunker? Do I need a bunker?
Photograph: iStock. What I had not realised is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people, he wrote in his 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason. But something else troubled him even more: how swiftly people began to envisage what technology like this could do one day, without pausing to ask what it should do.
A team of researchers wrote a paper that envisaged using a computer program similar to Weizenbaum's as a form of psychotherapy. Because of the time-sharing capabilities of modern and future computers, several hundred patients an hour could be handled by a computer system designed for this purpose, they wrote. Weizenbaum was appalled. He thought there were some human functions for which computers ought not to be substituted.
It has nothing to do with what computers can or cannot be made to do, he added. Respect, understanding and love are not technical problems. In his book, which turned him into a self-described heretic in the field of computer science, he argued that the most important issues were neither technological nor even mathematical; they are ethical. They cannot be settled by asking questions beginning with can.
The limits of the applicability of computers are ultimately statable only in terms of oughts. Half a century later, a strange hush has descended over the labour market in many countries - not least the US, where artificial intelligence has expanded from the nascent field it was when Weizenbaum was writing in the 1970s to a sector that has propelled the stock market to record highs.
Yet, notwithstanding the splashy headlines every few days about tech companies making AI-driven lay-offs, very little is actually happening in the labour market overall. The rate at which people are getting fired is low. The rate at which people are getting hired is low. The rate at which people are quitting their jobs is low.
It's as if everyone is holding their breath and waiting for what they have been told is coming. Last month, Mat Honan, the editor in chief of the MIT Technology Review, wrote an unusual, meditative essay titled The Era of AI Malaise that captured the mood. It's buying things while we sleep. It's discovering the structure of proteins.
It's telling children to kill themselves, he wrote. Will I have a job tomorrow? Will the market crash? Why does OpenAI need a bunker?
Do I need a bunker? Maybe I should have a bunker. We are told that 40 per cent of the jobs in the world are exposed to AI. Nobody wants to look like the fool who thinks you can hold back the tide.
Photograph: iStock. And while we wait, we forecast. Endlessly, we forecast. Among government departments, universities, think tanks and AI labs, a cottage industry has grown up in producing technical mapping exercises, many of which use large language models themselves to compare their capabilities against all the tasks that supposedly go into each person's job, in order to predict which are most exposed to automation.
Never mind that these predictions vary a lot depending on which model is used. And never mind that exposed doesn't tell you anything about whether your job might get better as a result of new AI tools, or worse, or disappear altogether. And so we are told that 40 per cent of the jobs in the world are exposed to AI; or maybe it's 300 million; or perhaps only 92 million jobs are really in trouble.
Weizenbaum would not be surprised by this obsession with forecasts. Back in the 1970s, he already saw that people were becoming distracted by the unnecessary, interminable and ultimately sterile exercise of making a catalogue of what computers will and will not be able to do. The metaphors we use are part of the problem. It is often said that a wave or tsunami of technological change is heading our way.
Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive of Microsoft AI, wrote a bestselling book called The Coming Wave. According to the book by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, Elon Musk once described his Doge efforts to overhaul the US government as akin to cleaning a beach of needles and faeces and trash. How much does cleaning the beach really matter if you've got a thousand-foot tsunami about to hit? Metaphors are powerful because they shape our sense of what seems reasonable and unreasonable.
What does the metaphor of AI as a tsunami imply would be a sensible course of action? To forecast - certainly, but also to be prepared to panic. That is not a sensible course of action, as Weizenbaum would argue. The way forward is not to forecast and prepare for the worst, but to think about what kind of world we want to create. And to ask questions that begin with ought, not can
Please follow us on Google to support usAI Forecasting Labour Market Weizenbaum Metaphors Tsunami Ethics
Ireland Latest News, Ireland Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
'I'll win the Lotto before there's a left wing government and here's why''They keep falling out among themselves and voters are dubious about their economic policies and don't trust them'
Read more »
Marcus O’Laoire: ‘We need to talk more about male fertility’Conversations with Parents podcast with Jen Hogan
Read more »
Brian Hayes: Banks need smarter regulation to boost Europe’s competitivenessEuropean and Irish banks today are fundamentally different institutions from those that existed before the financial crisis
Read more »
Darragh Ó Sé: Mayo showed exactly why they’re not serious contenders against MonaghanYou can’t hope to win an All-Ireland if you almost throw away a 12-point lead against an inferior team
Read more »