Artificial intelligence has crept into our lives almost without us realizing it. Nowadays, the rare thing is not to have ever used a chatbot, an image editing app, a translator or an autocomplete function.
However, Everything has a B side and, in this case, it is the massive loss of employment. A fear that many live with every day.
Until now, the most repeated message has been to worry, but what comes now is to directly throw up our hands. It has been claimed that AI will destroy some jobs, but create new ones. That there will be a transition. However, not all experts agree with this.
Roman Yampolskiy, a scientist specialized in artificial intelligence security and university professor in the United States, warns that no government has prepared plans for a mass unemployment scenario caused by AI. And when he says massive, he’s not talking about 10 or 20%, but something much bigger..
Yampolskiy affirms that humanity will see unemployment figures close to 99% in the long term. And this will not be because people do not want to work, but because there will simply be no human work to do better than a machine. According to him, this change will not be specific or temporary, but structural.
«We are all going to lose our jobs, which inevitably makes us wonder what we are going to do on an economic and personal level. The monetary part can have an easy solution if the abundance that AI promises us crystallizes, But what we do with our lives and with those hours that we no longer dedicate to working is a very different question.«comments the expert.
This is what they think in Spain: delighted with it, but afraid of what could happen
According to the latest report from the National Observatory of Technology and Society (ONTSI), 73% of Spaniards think that AI and other digital technologies will improve their work. But be careful, because at the same time, 74% believe that robots and AI will end up taking away more jobs than they create.
Specifically, 42% of Spaniards admit to having used AI in 2023 for some of these things, and 56% have tried it for personal, professional or study purposes. ChatGPT It is the absolute queen, with 83% of users, far ahead of others like Gemini, Bing Chat or Copilot. But, even if we like it, the shadow of dismissal hangs over many heads.
This is how we are, between optimism and fear. And it’s not just a work thing. More than half of people believe that AI will help with everyday things such as household chores, education or even entertainment.
54.5% see it as useful for cleaning, cooking or putting on the washing machine; 53% believe that it will be key to learning more and better; and almost 45% see it as an ally for leisure and art. Come on, AI is everywhere, but uncertainty does not go away.
OpenAI dismantles the myth and affirms that AI is not going to destroy all jobs
Contrary to what many believe, Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI, He wanted to put his feet on the ground and destroy the myth: “We have no evidence that artificial intelligence is going to destroy jobs”.
The statement of this great figure, although coming from the company that comes from it should be taken with a grain of salt, comes just when other leaders in this sector, such as Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has assured that AI will eliminate up to 50% of jobs of office in the next five years.
But OpenAI insists that they have not seen any real evidence of mass replacements. «We work with all types of companies and we haven’t yet seen people replacing entry-level employees across the board,» Lightcap explained. However, doubts remain in the air, since he is precisely not interested in AI innovation stopping cold..
He also wanted to send a reassuring message to the world, remembering that The craziest and most destructive predictions usually seek to attract attention or pressure governments and companies to prepare for possible changes, but the reality, at least today, is quite different.. «We don’t see any evidence that AI is destroying jobs on a large scale,» he explains.