Introduction

With Artificial intelligence gaining more prominence and acceptance in our society, it’s only a matter of time before some have ideas on how to exploit AI.

What makes AI in the workplace so important?

AI is being used to replace workers, mostly those in minimum wage jobs, because an AI doesn’t need a salary or wages. Instead of having to pay someone to do a certain task, why not buy equipment that can accomplish the same thing? What alarms me the most is, as AI advances, who’s to say any job is safe from being replaced with a robot? Thousands of people have lost jobs because of AI and those numbers will keep going up.

Why does this topic interest me?

This interests me because, I have worked a handful of minimum wage jobs. Luckily, I’ve never lost my job due to AI, but I have worked with people that have. I have also seen AI blatantly used in the workplace, specifically at fast food restaurants that require customers to fill out their order on a screen rather than a worker.

I believe everyone that runs a business will be interested in my findings. I understand that most business owners replace workers with AI to save money, but if there was a way to make AI less accessible or protect workers, it would affect their business greatly.

What information will I be searching for?

Some important questions I will be looking into are: What incentive do business owners have to keep workers instead of replacing them with AI? What are AI’s limits in terms of intelligence? Can the government intervene to protect minimum wage workers? A skill useful for this particular topic would be robotics or understanding how fast the science of AI is developing. AI development is most important because it is only a matter of time before AI can do any job as well as a human can. However, the main objective of this publication is trying to protect workers from AI replacing their jobs before that happens.