With many experts fearing A.I. developments could lead to more layoffs, there are questions and concerns being raised about what could be next for the U.S. labor force.
FOX Business’ “How America Works” host Mike Rowe issued a warning, Thursday, about A.I. developments and what it means for the white-collar worker.
“You can’t put your head in the sand, but you can’t panic either. It’s coming. You know, the robots are coming, the AI is coming,” Rowe said on “The Big Money Show” Thursday.
“People used to say that the robots are going to destroy skilled labor. Well, not really. I haven’t seen any plumbing robots. I haven’t seen any electrician robots. And I don’t think we’re going to see any artificial intelligence in the skilled trades to that degree. You can’t stop it. All you can do is decide to freak out completely or not.”
The rapid growth of A.I. has many industry experts trying to predict which job sectors will be most impacted as well as how many jobs could be replaced.
One AI expert, Ben Goertzel, predicted the tech could potentially replace 80% of jobs “in the next few years.”
Goertzel, the founder and chief executive officer of SingularityNET, told France’s AFP news agency at a summit in Brazil last week that a future like that could come to fruition with the introduction of systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Other studies have gone into further detail analyzing which jobs are most at risk for an A.I. takeover.
A Goldman Sachs study found that several industries had relatively little exposure to automation by AI technologies, including cleaning; installation, maintenance and repair; construction and extraction; production; and transportation moving. Each had over half of their tasks viewed as not being automatable with AI largely serving as a complementary tool for the remainder of those tasks.
Generally, fields less exposed to AI-driven automation tend to involve manual and outdoor work or specialized knowledge.
The Goldman Sachs report found health care practitioners and support staff; fishing, farming, and forestry; personal care; and protective services had less than one-quarter of their tasks that weren’t exposed to AI-driven automation. Although each had at least a portion of their tasks that could be complemented by AI.
