AI may not snatch away many jobs as expected

San Francisco: While researchers around the world expect job losses due to artificial intelligence (AI) soon, a new study has said that AI might not take as many jobs as expected.

A recent study conducted by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) investigated whether AI could perform tasks more efficiently than humans and whether it was cost-effective for businesses to replace human labour with AI. The study took into consideration the broader implications of AI implementation in the labour market.

The researchers found computer vision AI can currently automate tasks that makeup 1.6 per cent of worker wages in the US economy, excluding agriculture. However, only 23 per cent of those wages, equivalent to 0.4 per cent of the entire economy, would be cheaper for companies to automate instead of hiring human workers at current costs.

"We find that at today’s costs US businesses would choose not to automate most vision tasks that have “AI Exposure,” and that only 23 per cent of worker wages being paid for vision tasks would be attractive to automate," the authors said.

"Overall, our findings suggest that AI job displacement will be substantial, but also gradual -- and therefore there is room for (government) policy and retraining to mitigate unemployment impacts," they added.