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A globally recognised expert on artificial intelligence says the new technology will not take the jobs of professionals – not right away – but is taking on the tasks normally done by agents, for example, those who provide answers in call centres.
“Professionals are not going away. Those jobs are going to stay. That’s my short-term view,” said Aditya ‘Ed’ Watal, founder and principal of Intellibus, an American company, which builds platforms leveraging AI, big data and the cloud.
“The long-term view – nobody knows,” he added
“If the job of the professional is to provide answers, then those jobs are going away. If the job of the professional is to ask the right questions, those jobs are here forever,” Watal said in a presentation on the second day of the Jamaica Stock Exchange 20th Regional Investments & Capital Markets Conference in New Kingston.
Speaking on the topic ‘The impact of AI on the job market’, Watal, whose company is described as employing engineers with genius skills and helping fintechs and banks worldwide, suggested that one use of AI is to do tasks workers do not want to do but which are important, thus leaving workers to pursue what they want to do.
“The job of AI is basically to do all the stupid stuff you don’t want to do, or all the other stuff that you’re doing because it’s a job,” he said. “So think of all the stuff that you hate, you don’t want to do. Just give it to AI. It’s not going to take your job away. It’s going to make you happier and make your life better. And then do all the stuff that you meaningfully want to pursue. What those are vary from person to person.”
Responding to concerns about the security of jobs in the global services sector, alternatively referred to as business process outsourcing, Watal said AI will take some tasks which require answers to be provided, but not where decisions are being made.
“The most impacted jobs would be the jobs of any job title that ends with the word ‘agent’,” he said. “We are offloading agency to AI. Agency is, hey, can you do this for me? And the AI is going to do some action for you.”
Decision-making is a higher order of agency which requires the input of people, he added.
“Asking AI to go do some research and tell you what shoes to buy versus asking AI to make the decision to buy the shoe for you [are] different orders of agency,” said Watal. “The higher-order agency is less likely to go away because people will still want to make their own decisions.” he said.
The outsourcing sector in Jamaica employs an estimated 60,000 persons. It’s one of the sectors that has helped to drive down the unemployment rate in Jamaica, with new data released by Statin on Wednesday showing a rate of 3.5 per cent.
The entrepreneur, who has extensive experience advising global leaders and lecturing at New York University and Stanford University in the United States, also suggested AI could be useful in agriculture with precision spraying of fertiliser on crops, for example, resulting in huge savings.
Watal will be in Geneva, Switzerland, next week for the launch of World Digital Governance, a United Nations initiative on digital data, AI and virtual assets.
English (US) ·