The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries across the globe, bringing unprecedented efficiency, innovation, and transformation. This technological leap also heralds a significant shift in the employment landscape, especially where AI has demonstrated the ability to perform some tasks within the job scope.
Aside from the fact that some of these tasks can be competently performed by AI, it is also able to do so very rapidly and at a very low cost, and this threatens to displace workers across various industries.
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#1 Programmer
While this is perhaps the most unexpected, AI is already able to write code that is able to fulfil relatively complex functions, and it is able to write it in various programming languages such as C++, Python and Javascript.
While more complex code may not always be correct, this could significantly shorten the time required for a programmer to write code since AI can do some of the low-level legwork. AI can be used to draft and structure the code, while a programmer can sift through and tweak or edit the code in order to optimise it.
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#2 Graphics Designer
Adobe tools have already integrated some AI-assisted functions to help digital artists with their design process. While AI does not have sufficient creativity to conceptualise and imagine the artwork before producing it, it can significantly shorten the production process by rapidly performing image manipulation tasks which were previously very tedious or time-consuming.
While artists may still be required to conceptualise the artwork or perform the final touch on images, it is likely that the AI assistance will lower the workload of the artist and reduce the number of artists needed within the company.
#3 Media And Content Creation
AI has already proven itself quite adept at video editing and manipulation. While such technology has previously been used to re-create a young Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia for new Star Wars productions, it has become sufficiently advanced in recent years that deepfakes have become accessible and easy to make.
At present, AI tools enable easy creation of deepfakes which have already been used by malicious actors for deepfake pornography, or for the purposes of scams and disinformation campaigns. Recently, Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s likeness has been exploited to promote investment in a cryptocurrency.
Aside from deepfakes, AI possesses ability to streamline the workflow for multimedia content creators. Adobe Premiere Pro has some AI-enabled functions which help to streamline the everyday content creator’s workload at a click of a button.
The most labour-intensive task for video editors is to scrub through footage and cut out unwanted segments such as silences or filler words in order for the video to flow more smoothly. Adobe Premiere has implemented a function where an AI can reliably identify such instances and cut them out of the video with the click of a button.
In addition to this, the AI can generate subtitles with high accuracy. While this used to previously be a time-consuming manual transcription process, nowadays video editors only need to double-check that the generated subtitles are correct.
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#4 Customer Service Representatives
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants have already been implemented by many businesses and can handle a wide range of customer inquiries and support tasks efficiently and at a lower cost compared to human representatives. These AI systems can provide instant 24/7 responses to customer queries, offer personalized recommendations, and even handle complex interactions using machine learning algorithms.
While AI systems are still not sufficiently sophisticated to handle complaints and authorise refunds, they are able to handle many other customer queries such as product recommendations and some limited troubleshooting support.
#5 Writers
AI has sufficiently advanced language models which can produce grammatically accurate prose. AI algorithms, such as those used by ChatGPT, can produce high-quality text quickly and at scale, often at a fraction of the cost of human writers. This shift poses a significant challenge to writers, who must now compete with machines that can mimic various writing styles and adapt to diverse content demands.
While the core research and fact-checking must still be done by the writer, AI has the ability to check for grammatical errors, rephrase, or even write drafts based on prompts.
Hallucinations Are Still A Real Problem
‘Hallucinations’ is a term used to refer to AI-generated responses which are incorrect. Unfortunately, while a human has better ability to assess if they themselves are unsure, an AI has a tendency to present even incorrect responses with a high level of certainty. This could present itself in situations where an AI writes code that is entirely dysfunctional or makes a very realistic looking picture or video with obvious defects, such as a cat only having two limbs.
What this means is that while AI can tentatively replace or supplement large sections of the workflow for each of the jobs above, there still ultimately needs to be a human at the end of the line to check the work and ensure that it is correct.
While there is no guarantee that AI will ever fully replace humans in the abovementioned jobs, AI has already proven its ability to perform some tasks more rapidly and cheaply than humans, and this still presents a threat to some people working in those jobs.
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