Automation, AI development will trigger worldwide upheavals in the job market

As artificial intelligence ( AI) is showing strong growth momentum and shaping the future of how humans work and live, it is inevitable that the rise of AI will give impetus to social evolution, but at the same time drive people out of the job market and prompt a reshuffle to the workforce distribution.

Early this month, the three- day Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum was held in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. Many expressed concerns about technological innovation and industrial restructuring brought about by AI. Robin Li Yanhong, founder and CEO of China’s Internet giant Baidu said that communications between humans and computers via natural language would become reality in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Baidu confirmed on February 9 that it had started to optimize its healthcare business to put more emphasis on AI in the healthcare industry. The move has affected employees and pushed them to the verge of unemployment. Li predicted that AI will be used for diagnosing illnesses and treatment recommendations based on a gene database. A number of medical professionals like doctors are likely to become jobless in the foreseeable future.

Baidu’s endeavor to explore the potential of and promote AI is just the tip of the iceberg. While advances in AI are heralding a new age of automation and bringing benefits like improvements in work efficiency and social productivity, experts worry that 40 percent of all jobs might be lost to automation in the coming two decades.

While most of the jobs at risk are lowskilled and repetitive ones, new job opportunities generated by AI usually require highly skilled workers. Currently, workers with lower- end skills make up a large portion of China’s labor market, so they will become less competitive. Social inequality and instability may become more intense as those displaced fail to improve and relocate themselves from outdated industries to new ones. On top of that, they may find no way in sharing the benefits of technological change, causing a widening income disparity between rich and poor.

Education and training need to be given a high priority to reduce the impacts of AI. However, education especially vocational education in China lags far behind the rapid changes in society. Current teaching methods are theoryoriented and focused on rote learning, which put students at a disadvantage because they are unable to think in a logical, critical and independent way. Since most of them constitute the major labor force of repetitive jobs, they are threatened by automation.

To tackle these problems, governments should issue preferential policies, consider legislation and alleviate more funds in education industry to establish high- level vocational schools and ensure diversified, sustainable and specialized vocational education. School authorities need to build quality teaching staffs who have outstanding technical skills and help students ignite their interests and develop rounded abilities.

Automation will take precedence in science, but has a bleak future in liberal arts because it lacks human consciousness and aestheticism. Activities involving close human interaction like craftsmen and caretakers have a relatively low potential for automation.

Just like the Industrial Revolution swept across the globe starting around the 1760s, AI and automation will make a splash worldwide. Darwin’s survival of the fittest sheds light on how we have to keep pace with the times and become fully prepared for social updates.