At the Global Future Councils 2024 in Dubai, Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor of Stanford University, was convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) does not come for the job but to help workers. In the “Keeping AI on Track” session, Dr. Brynjolfsson of the Digital Economy Lab, Stanford, described AI as the most disruptive technology since the Industrial Revolution. But he stressed that he means augmentation with AI rather than completing work with it.
He went further on to say that most employees perform several tasks, and while AI performs optimally in some of these tasks, other tasks require human input. Giving an example of a specialist, with which AI most often performs tasks in image interpretation, Dr. Brynjolfsson drew attention to the fact that in addition to making diagnoses, radiologists sedate patients, which is impossible without the human touch. The application of AI in radiotherapy was initially a cause for concern because many expected many professionals like radiologists to be replaced by the systems, the number of professional actually tripled between 2016 and 2022.
Dr. Brynjolfsson estimates that at least ten percent of workers’ tasks are being done with at least ten percent AI support now, and 19% of the individuals, mostly those who were well paid, saw more than fifty percent of their occupation performed partly in support of an AI tool. He contended that AI must become the way policy makers and business leaders bring out better capability for man to embrace, not the tendency to over emphasise automation of jobs.
Stating his belief that over the next decade there lies a potential for a tremendous business transformation through application of AI, he called on governments to consider this. Global Future Councils 2024, scheduled from October 15th–17th 2024 in Dubai shall comprise of more than seven hundred experts and policymakers in various fields and shall be aimed at anticipating, analyzing and providing recommendations to major trends including the impending AI advances to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.
