Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of the Unemployment Rate Worldwide

“Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need'. Work is essential to the meaning of human life. To many people today, work means having a job. However, artificial intelligence (AI) will soon be able to take over many human jobs. A significant amount of social unrest will be caused by unemployment before the ethical issues of AI can be addressed. Thus, unemployment will be the most pressing social issue with respect to AI technologies. Technological development, and in particular digitalization, has major implications for labour markets. As unemployment is a problem of great concern for policy makers of both developing and developed countries here we will know more about unemployment rate as this essay explores how and whether AI is one of the cause of rising unemployment rate worldwide. Assessing impact of AI will be crucial for developing policies that promote efficient labour markets for the benefit of workers, employers and societies as a whole. 

AI and Unemployment in the World

AI is no longer only a science fiction fantasy or a simple computer program that plays games has developed certain cognitive characters of the human brain that can learn and generate its own responses without explicit programming. Hence, with continued investment, AI will grow exponentially and dramatically transform society. Job automation with AI is becoming the prevailing trend across different industries. Some have even called AI the fourth industrial revolution, after steam power, electricity and electronics. But, unlike past revolutions, this revolution could leave up to 35% of all workers in the UK, and 47% of those in the US, at risk of being displaced by technology over the next 20 years, according to Oxford University research.

In 1997, IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. In 2011, IBM’s Watson stunned the technology industry with its victory against two of Jeopardy’s greatest champions. In 2016, Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo defeated the number one ranked human Go player Lee Se-dol. In the past, many jobs have been lost due to technological advancements and large amounts of social upheaval were created. One classic example of this occurred during the 19th century’s Industrial Revolution in England. As the use of automated looms and knitting frames increased, British weavers and textile workers who spent years training by the authors. In their craft feared that less skilled workers were robbing them of their livelihood. However, the artisans’ appeals for government assistance were ignored, so a few desperate weavers began breaking into factories and destroying textile machines. The people called themselves the Luddites and resistance against automated weaving spread across the English countryside. Resistance was so fierce that sledgehammer-wielding Luddites attacked and burned factories, in some cases they even exchanged gunfire with company guards and soldiers. The workers set upon these raids in hopes that the British government may ban weaving machines, but the government quashed the movement and made machine breaking punishable by death.

Today, the Luddites are simply remembered as technophobes, but they are a real example of the fear the threat of structural unemployment creates. And as demonstrated by Youngstown, that fear is not unfounded. However, Brynjolfsson also states that “The computer processor doubles in power every 18 months, 10 times greater every five years, it’s a very different scale of advancement and it’s affecting a broader set of the economy than the external-combustion engine did, in terms of all the psychological feature tasks. Because of the swiftness of technology development, AI unemployment is a looming problem that needs to be confronted now.

Artificial Intelligence has dramatically improved our world in some ways, however there are issues concerning its impact on employment and therefore the personnel. It has been predicted that mass unemployment will occur in the next decade all because of automation and neural networks. Business, Education, Market and Government sector has significantly transformed due to AI. Following are the sectors where AI can replace humans:

• Transportation: Self driven vehicles which requires little or no human inputs are around the edge and can acquire the transportation market at any time. With the growth in this, the demand for professionals like car drivers, sailors and pilots would instantly drop.
• E-Commerce: It has undergone massive transformation and yet more is about to come due to introduction of drones and robots to execute different tasks such as delivering, collecting and packing the product. It will decrease the demand for salespersons and network stores.
• Agriculture: with robots working on the fields accurately, effectively and efficiently will remove many farmers from their job. Very little human input would be required as robots will seamlessly perform all the tasks such as irrigating the fields, spreading pesticides and fertilizers, cutting and harvesting the crops.

Areas where AI is replacing human work:

• Information Technology: It is expected that automation would increase to a great extent in coming years. Earlier humans were needed for testing any software code but now automated testing is performed. Thus reducing the need for IT professionals.
• Real Estate: Real estate plays a vital role in buying and selling of the home. Everything is possible on our fingertips. Online services such as magic bricks and 99 acre help customers to buy and sell their properties. Thus a seller would reach customers without any need of agent.

Some researches have defined that unemployment is moderately dependent on AI, therefore any upgradation in AI will have an impact on employment level. Every country is trying to reduce unemployment to the lowest extent as possible. The ten countries with the lowest unemployment rates are Cambodia (0.30%), Qatar (0.60%), Thailand (0.70%), Belarus (1.0%), Benin (1.0%), Gibraltar (1.0%), Tonga (1.1%), Isle of Man (1.1%), Laos (1.5%) and United Arab Emirates (1.60%) respectively. The ten countries with the highest unemployment rates are Burkina Faso (77%), Syria (50%), Senegal (48%), Haiti (40.60%), Kenya (40%), Djibouti (40%), Marshall Islands (36%), Namibia (34%), Kiribati (30.60%) and Libya (30%) respectively.

Conclusion

From the research paper we can conclude that technological upgradation to Artificial Intelligence is one of the major reason for unemployment worldwide. In the long-standing time, we might witness sure jobs that are less relevant and at last obsolete. Although AI has various advantages if enforced in day to day life by creating work easier and quicker. However it's additionally changing into a cause for state. That the biggest challenge would be to implement it in such how that it doesn’t enhance unemployment.