Perhaps we need to be more cautious in assessing AI’s Impact

I’ve written a couple of posts this year about Artificial Intelligence – in April trying to put 

the sudden panic about it in the wider context of the discussion about the social impact of 

technology which has been ongoing since at least the 1980s; and in June about the 

possible impact on jobs. The latter post reminded us that such concerns had been around 

since Charles Handy’s 1984 book “The Future of Work” – although Living Together – the 

future of politics in a world transformed by technology by James Susskind in 2018 did 

paint a fairly grim picture. 

But both posts were perhaps too alarmist. Certainly a 2016 OECD report on The Risk of 

Automation for Jobs suggested that, if you looked at TASKS rather than OCCUPATIONS. 

the likely impact was minimal 

"Our paper serves two purposes. Firstly, we estimate the job automatibility of jobs for 21 

OECD countries based on a task-based approach. In contrast to other studies, we take into 

account the heterogeneity of workers’ tasks within occupations. Overall, we find that, on 

average across the 21 OECD countries, 9 % of jobs are automatable. The threat from 

technological advances thus seems much less pronounced compared to the occupation

-based approach. We further find heterogeneities across OECD countries. For instance, 

while the share of automatable jobs is 6 % in Korea, the corresponding share is 12 % in 

Austria. Differences between countries may reflect general differences in workplace 

organisation, differences in previous investments into automation technologies as well as 

differences in the education of workers across countries"   

and another report the following year supported this. For more discussion about the social impact of technological developments I recommend this podcast

That having been said, I must confess to one anxiety - relating to nuclear safety. Most of us have heard of the incident of a Russian radar official who identified an incoming ballistic missile on the screen but had the intelligence to assume that it was a glitch. So-called Artificial Intelligence does not have that same intelligence and would have obeyed what it was being told. We might assume that humans will always be there and act as a check – but most people in this field tell us that the day will shortly dawn when no such human checks will be there.    

For a marvellous discussion between Mustafa Suleyman and Yuval Harari, view

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JkPWHr7sTY&ab_channel=YuvalNoahHarari

Further Reading
The Gutenberg Parenthesis – the age of print and its lessons for the age of the 
internet Jeff Jarvis (2023)
Impromptu – ampflifying our humanity through AI" by AI and Reid Hoffman (2023) Interesting to have 
a book partly written by Artificial Intelligence!!  
http://mccaine.org/2022/04/26/book-review-aaron-benanav-automation-and-the-future-of-work/
this is a recent discussion with the authors of “The  Second Machine Age” (2014)
The Age of AI; and our human future Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and D Huttenlocher (2021)
Yes – that Kissinger and Schmidt! google excerpts only
Automation and the future of work; Aaron Benanov (2020) 2 articles from New Left Review
How to Run a City like Amazon and other Fables; ed M Graham…. J Shaw (2019)
Automation and the future of work HMSO (2019) a helpful overview
Rebooting AI - AI we can trust 2019Living Together – the future of politics in a world transformed by technology; James Susskind (2018) reviewed here
The People v Tech – how the internet is killing democracy (and how we save it) Jamie Bartlett (2018) looks a good read
Ten Arguments for Deleting your social media right now; Jaron Lanier (2018) A recognised expert
A World without Work? (Values and Capitalism network 2018)
Utopia is Creepy; Nicholas Carr (2016) another famous IT writer
The Internet is not the Answer; Andrew Keen (2015)
The Future of Work (ILO 2015) from the international Labour thinktank
A World without Work (The Atlantic 2015) an early article
The Second Machine Age; Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014) One of the classics
From Guttenberg to Zuckenberg – what you really need to know about the Internet; John Naughton (2013)
 If the link tempts you, the full book is here 
To Save everything click here – the folly of technological solutionism; Efgeni Morozov (2013) 
another classic 

The Shallows - what the internet is doing to our brain Nicholas Carr (2010) an early IT warning