„AI doesn't go on strike. It doesn't ask for a pay raise.” This is how CEOs think about AI

Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, and according to Jensen Huang, it will be beneficial to society. Despite everything, many employees fear for their jobs - and it seems they may have good reasons to. This is evident in the statements of some corporate CEOs, who openly claim that artificial intelligence is a breakthrough and can perform tasks far better than humans (vide Gizmodo).

AI doesn't require what humans do

A corporation's goal is to increase productivity and efficiency. Artificial intelligence enables this - though often at the cost of human workers, as Elijah Clark points out. He runs a consulting firm that advises companies on implementing AI-driven solutions. Clark doesn’t hide the reason behind it:

At the same time, Elijah Clark referred to an incident at his company, where he laid off 27 of the 30 student employees in the sales department. Clark explained that this decision benefited the company, as tasks that once took a week now take less than a day - or in some cases, an hour. "In the area of efficiency, it made more sense to get rid of people" - he concluded.

The invisible work of regular employees

Regular employees have a different perspective on the matter. On one hand, employees face the constant threat of losing their jobs. They never know when the CEO might decide to replace a department’s work with artificial intelligence. In addition to this, another threat emerges—the so-called 'invisible labor,' where practically all internet users unknowingly contribute to training artificial intelligence models.

In some companies, this becomes more apparent if we pay attention to what’s happening around us. Krystal Kauffman, who has been working with Amazon Mechanical Turk since 2015, highlighted this issue. Until recently, the tasks associated with the position were varied. However, recently, these tasks have become very monotonous, mainly involving data labeling and annotation.

In her opinion, this kind of human labor inflates the AI bubble. The ongoing improvement of artificial intelligence models would not be possible without the contributions of human employees, often unaware of their role in it. This, in turn, gives CEOs a tool to replace their employees with AI. Nevertheless, executives should temper their optimism with caution. Predictions suggest that only 1% of companies will survive when the AI bubble bursts. Besides, what will happen when shareholders decide to replace CEOs with artificial intelligence? Internet users are already raising this question.

• tech
• AI / Artificial Intelligence