AI job impact may be smaller than expected, MIT researchers claim: Here’s why

While researchers around the world expect jobs to be lost soon due to artificial intelligence (AI), a new study says that AI may not be able to take over as many jobs as expected.

A recent study conducted by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) examined whether AI can perform tasks more efficiently than humans and whether it is cost-effective for businesses to replace human labor with AI. .

The study took into account the broader impacts of AI implementation on the labor market.

The researchers found that computer vision AI can automate tasks that currently make up 1.6 percent of workers’ wages in the US economy, excluding agriculture.

However, only 23 percent of that salary, equivalent to 0.4 percent of the entire economy, would be cheaper for companies to automate rather than hire human workers at current costs.

“We found that at today’s prices, U.S. businesses with “AI exposure” would choose not to automate most vision tasks and that it would be attractive to automate only 23 percent of workers’ wages paid for vision tasks,” the authors said. “

“Overall, our findings suggest that AI job displacement will be substantial, but also gradual – and so there is scope for (government) policy and retraining to mitigate the impact of unemployment,” he said.

The study included examples of “vision tasks” that AI could achieve, including analyzing images from hospital diagnostic equipment or checking trays to make sure they contain the right items.

Researchers surveyed employees to determine the portion of their tasks that could be completed by computer vision. He later developed models to assess cost-effectiveness.

They found that it would rarely be worthwhile to use AI visual detection to replace workers.

“We found that the average employee works in a firm where no amount of vision is cost-effective to automate tasks. Even a firm with 5,000 employees, i.e., larger than 99.9 percent of firms in the US, could cost-effectively automate less than one-tenth of its existing vision labor at the current cost structure,” the researchers said.

The study acknowledged that the cost of AI will decline over time, but the authors do not think it will do so as quickly as some have suggested. He also predicted that it will take some time for AI to have a big impact on these types of businesses.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – IANS)