Introduction: Today is the May Fourth Youth Day. How did you spend this festival? Take a half day off? Received a gift? Received holiday benefits? Popularized the history of the May Fourth Movement? Patriotic education? Or is there no sense of ceremony, and it just passed?
According to the definition of UNESCO, people aged 16-45 are young people. So don't give up easily, don't put yourself into the greasy middle-aged in advance. I believe that 99.9% of you who are reading this article are not over the age of the festival, and most of them can still celebrate the festival more than ten years later. But can you imagine the world ten years from now? What will your job be in 2030? What kind of life do you have?
In the future, will you thank yourself for soaking wolfberry today?
According to a McKinsey report, by 2030, 800 million people worldwide will lose their jobs due to the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics, and another 375 million will need a new job. In 2030, China's labor demand will be 16 million fewer than in 2016. Artificial intelligence, industrial robots, service robots will steal your jobs in the automotive, electronics, chemical, food, cleaning, housekeeping, chef and other industries.
In addition, UBS also has a similar report, pointing out that "30 million to 50 million jobs in the Asian region will be affected in the medium and long term".
Seeing this, you must want to complain that the editor is selling anxiety again (Ah? Why?). It's a shame this time! Because, the following is a turning point...
The artificial intelligence threat theory is actually very unreliable. From the perspective of employment, the rapid development of artificial intelligence will inevitably create more employment opportunities in related fields. In the book "AI Legend: A Popular History of Artificial Intelligence", the author Chen Zongzhou accused the domestic media of being suspected of being a headline party when citing the UBS report, and then refuted the threat theory of artificial intelligence in an all-round way, and firmly believed that artificial intelligence is "an intelligent tool for human beings. and close friends."
The following is excerpted from the book "AI Legends: A Popular History of Artificial Intelligence".
01 AI is actually creating jobs for you
Changes in jobs have always existed in the development of human society, but in recent years, AI threat theorists have continued to exaggerate and exaggerate that AI and robots will take away human jobs. Therefore, the study of job changes is one of the major social issues.
Research reports on the impact of AI on jobs have come out one after the other, and previous reports have often contained warning signs that the issue needs to be taken seriously. However, upbeat reports are also starting to emerge. In April 2017, UBS Wealth Management launched the research report "Asia's Future: How Artificial Intelligence is Shaping the New Face of Asia". The report boldly predicts that under the trend of AI-driven innovation, 30 million to 50 million jobs in Asia will be affected in the medium and long term. A well-known domestic media then made the title accordingly - "UBS: artificial intelligence will threaten 30 million jobs in Asia". In fact, there is more important information in the report - the new job opportunities that will come with it will reduce this impact.
UBS estimates that by 2030, the economic value of AI in Asia will be as high as $1.8-3.0 trillion annually. And AI will have a huge impact on industries such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and transportation, which together are equivalent to two-thirds of current Asian GDP.
UBS believes that AI will affect a large number of jobs. But overall, AI is unlikely to lead to a jobs crisis. The overall productivity of Asian workers will increase significantly with the rise of AI, there will be ample opportunities to upskill and move to other creative fields, and eventually AI will create millions of new jobs in Asia, so the net unemployment rate should be Significantly reduced and relatively controllable.
The UBS report gives inspiration that AI will greatly affect jobs, but if it is dealt with properly, the overall employment situation in society will be improved and controllable.
Experience and facts since the Industrial Revolution can also be used as evidence. The extensive use of machines has greatly reduced agricultural and handicraft workers, but the employment of the whole society has increased significantly. The same is true of the information technology revolution. The information technology that has penetrated into various industries like mercury has affected countless old jobs, but we have also witnessed with our own eyes that new jobs are constantly being created. Someone once calculated that if there were no digital program-controlled switches, more than half of American women would not be able to work as telephone operators. But where are they today? in another position. This is a prime example of how new technology is reshaping jobs. The mirror of history can see the future of AI.
02 From fear of solar eclipse, lunar eclipse, to fear of artificial intelligence
The mainstream AI experts and scholars insist on opposing the AI threat theory. Yann LeCun, director of the Facebook AI Lab and professor of computer science at New York University (NYU), is one of the main founders of deep learning. He is very disgusted with the AI threat theory. In an April 2014 interview with IEEE Spectrum, he argued that AI researchers had long underestimated the difficulty of building intelligent machines. Every new wave of AI brings a phase from blind optimism to irrationality and finally to depression.
The blind and pessimistic predictions of AI threat theory appear today, much like a person entering a lush and vibrant forest loses his direction and path. If you can climb to the top of the forest and look back, look back on the way you came, and look ahead, the conclusion may be completely different.
History is a mirror. Dr. Liu Feng, the author of "Internet Evolution" and a Chinese artificial intelligence expert, analyzed this way: Historically, we have walked in fear all the way, and we have been afraid of solar eclipses and lunar eclipses; after the new technology revolution, our fears have become more frequent and we have been afraid of Machines, feared that machines control humans, feared trains, thought that they would destroy the dragon veins, feared TV, worried that they would be addicted to programs forever, and feared the Millennium Bug, which would lead to great social chaos; now I am afraid of artificial intelligence. The fear of human beings becoming slaves, even puppets, is a continuation of all the fears in history.
Yes, the current AI threat theory is still a continuation of the phobia of human uncertainty in the future. Whenever important new things appear, this phobia will appear again and again. Such phobias are often aggravated by the temporary or one-sided remarks of celebrities and wise men, and even the ravings that AI will end human beings.
03 Was Alan Turing Wrong?
Alan Turing, who made a foundational contribution to the development of AI, is both a wise man and a celebrity. He has systematically studied whether machines can think and whether machines have intelligence, and he predicted the future of computers very early. After Turing's tragic death in 1954, his mother, Sara Turing, wrote an influential book citing a letter from Turing's closest colleague, the wife of British mathematician Newman.
Mrs Newman wrote: "I remember around 1948 Alan and my husband were sitting in the garden of my home in Bowden discussing computing and its future. I was not able to participate in the discussion, but many words came into my mind. In my ear. Suddenly I heard a sentence that made my whole body tremble. Alan said thoughtfully, I speculate that when the computer develops to that stage, we may not understand how it works." Turing's thoughts on the future of computers, It not only affected Mrs. Newman who was present, but also affected that generation.
But, almost 70 years later, what have we seen? Does anyone still tremble with fear of the future of computing? This is not the first time that a wise man's prophecy has failed.
About the author: Chen Zongzhou, a science writer, founder of several well-known technology media, and currently the editor-in-chief of "Global Science" magazine.
This article is excerpted from AI Legends: A Popular History of Artificial Intelligence, published with the permission of the publisher.
Further reading " AI Legends: A Popular History of Artificial Intelligence "
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