According to a new study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), artificial intelligence is now unable to cost-effectively replace humans in the majority of employment. The study comes amid fears that the rapid growth of AI could have an influence on the livelihoods of millions of job seekers throughout the world. The MIT study focused on employment that used computer vision to see whether AI could replace people in an economically sustainable manner. Computer vision is a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that derives meaningful information from digital photographs and other visual inputs. Its most common applications are object identification systems for autonomous driving and photo categorization on smartphones.
The study revealed only 23 per cent of workers can be cost-effectively replaced by artificial intelligence if measured in terms of dollar wages. AI-powered virtual recognition devices and systems are so expensive to install and maintain that humans might end up doing the job more economically. “Machines will steal our jobs’ is a sentiment frequently expressed during times of rapid technological change. Such anxiety has re-emerged with the creation of large language models,” the researchers from MIT said in their 45-page paper titled ‘Beyond AI Exposure’. “We find that only 23% of worker compensation ‘exposed’ to AI computer vision would be cost-effective for firms to automate because of the large upfront costs of AI systems,” they concluded.
The introduction of advanced AI models such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, has sparked concerns about job displacement
Computer vision’s cost-benefit ratio shines brightest in retail, transportation, and warehousing, which are controlled by Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. According to the MIT report, the potential extends to healthcare. The authors argue that more forceful artificial intelligence deployment, particularly through AI-as-a-service subscriptions, could increase viability and broaden applications. The project was funded by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and used online surveys to collect data on about 1,000 visually assisted tasks across 800 occupations. Currently, only 3% of these operations can be cost-effectively automated, but the researchers predict a potential increase to 40% by 2030, assuming dropping data prices and greater accuracy.
The introduction of advanced AI models such as ChatGPT and its counterparts, such as Google’s Bard, has sparked concerns about widespread job displacement, as these chatbots demonstrate expertise in jobs that were previously reserved for humans. The International Monetary Fund warned last week that over 40% of global jobs might be affected, emphasizing the importance of authorities properly balancing AI’s potential with its potential drawbacks.
