We live in a world where chatbots can communicate seamlessly, computers can process information with fewer errors than humans, and we use robotic and automated processes as part of everyday life. As a result of all this - and the huge leap of late in AI use - are there any jobs that technology won't replace in due course? Prof Alan Smeaton from DCU joined the Today With Claire Byrne show on RTÉ Radio 1 to discuss this issue. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above).
Smeaton began by highlighting the difference the two forms of AI currently in use. "The old form of artificial intelligence, if we can call it that, is the stuff that's been working under the hood for us for decades. We see it Netflix recommendations and shopping recommendations and stuff like that. That's the visible face of it. But in the background, it's also working in medical diagnosis, in a lot of the automation that goes on in computer vision, in drug discovery and vaccination discovery. We don't see those things, we see the effects of those things.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today With Claire Byrne, Prof Alan Smeaton in defence of AI
"Less than a year ago, we had OpenAI and ChatGPT, the generative AI. The difference between the old and the new is the old is working in the background and helping us. This new form is in our faces and it's happening at a rate which is much faster than anything we've seen previously. We were all caught unawares by it, by the speed, by the visibility of it and by the accessibility of it. This naturally causes fears and knee-jerk reactions. The first thing that we are afraid of - well, apart from students cheating at exams - is jobs and how's that going to replace my job? And that feeds that narrative and is very easy clickbait to get sucked into."
How will this affect our lives?
"Every day, we're constantly making decisions: 'what will I wear this morning?' 'What am I going to put on my shopping list?' 'Where am I going to go in my holidays?' All those kinds of things - and bigger decisions that we make in our workplaces, in our leisure.
An important part of that decision making is that we build upon our experiences, our memories, our knowledge, our emotions. Sometimes we even are influenced by our fatigue. Sometimes we're more alert in certain parts of day than others. We have our experiences and we have our wisdoms.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today With Claire Byrne, Prof Alan Smeaton on the new array of AI chatbots
"AI can generate and can provide knowledge, but it can't provide any of those other things. When we make a creative decision, as we do dozens of times in our days, we draw on all of those personal experiences and personal advantages and characteristics that AI doesn't have. In the workplace and our leisure and our entertainment, this form of generative AI will be a convenient assistant, but it cannot replace human decision-making."
What jobs do you reckon are safe with the rise of generative AI?
"The introduction of every major disruptive technology has had an influence on jobs, but it also changes the nature of those jobs. Sometimes jobs get lost, but oftentimes or almost always, more jobs get created as a result of things like the internet for example.
"The jobs that are safe are anything that requires creativity and that requires an element of decision-making, which involves emotion, which involves experience, which involves wisdom. All of those kind of things will benefit from generative AI as a partner.
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From Lyric FM's Culture File, can you spot an AI-written email?
"One of the examples that people often cite is graphic design, producing images. There are fantastic systems like Midjourney that can produce the most exotic images, but they need to be handheld and they need to be directed, and they need to be crafted to generate those images by guess what? People who bring in wisdom and experience and emotion and empathy and all of those other characteristics."
And what new jobs might be created as a result of AI?
"It puts tools at your fingertips to allow you to create content, which is of really high quality. Anything which is in the area of creating content is going to benefit greatly from this. I think there's a challenge in making the public aware of this. There needs to be a very large, broad education aimed at the public about artificial intelligence.
"This is lifelong learning. Never has this phrase been more true than at the present time looking at this particular topic. It's not a threat to your job. It's an increment. It's a development. It's a maturation of your job to change the nature of that. That behooves all of us to embrace lifelong learning, to be aware of it, to learn about it, to see how it can help us.
"It keeps us on our toes, keeps us fresh. It stops us getting complacent and embedded into a particular job spec or habits. It's not about training for a job for life. The only people who've done that that I know is myself, because I'm still a lecturer in a university. And my children say to me, I should never give career advice because I've only had the one job."
