AI looks set to be transformative for us all, but it also brings a real risk of job losses and widening social and economic divides. UN experts are focusing on how to manage that transition, to ensure the benefits of the technology outweigh the threats.
The main threat is straight out of The Matrix: energy consumption.
In a time where more and more parts of the world are having water and energy supply issues, we have AI server farms springing up that consume as much power as a small city… leaving humans with higher costs and less power available.
As for the rest, AI sucks at trades currently, and will only be replacing information worker functions in the near term. Of course, since suppliers compete for work, AI will be mostly an add-on, where the losers in the short term will be those who don’t add it on.
In the long term, those who are very focused in how it is leveraged will win, because you still need to train new humans, and that’s difficult to do if all the junior work is being handled by AI.
So in 50 years or so (if not sooner), we’ll see the full effects of this push to integrate AI at all costs, both on expertise and on the environment.