I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
Better than humanly possible.
There is a — quite reasonable — fear that the increasing use of artificial intelligence will mean job loss and redundancies on a large scale. After all, the main reason for developing AI is to do jobs better than humans can, naturally that’s going to lead to humans being replaced and increasing unemployment, right? So why so are many people so excited about AI when it might leave them jobless?
Well, it has huge advantages. Having a task performed faster, cheaper and at the same or even better quality is obviously attractive from the point of view of the person who wants to get that task done. Having that sort of capability in the field of medicine — perhaps aiding with diagnosis, or helping administer the correct medication at the correct time — could potentially save a lot of lives.
What is AI?
We use the term Artificial Intelligence pretty interchangeably to describe a fairly wide range of things. The definition of the term (according to a quick Google search) is also quite broad. The first thing I think of when I hear the term ‘AI’ is full-on, self aware, artificial consciousness. However, that kind of artificial sapience isn’t yet a reality; what we’re usually talking about when we mention AI is a few different things, but it boils down to being able to automate tasks that normally require human intelligence to perform.
For the record, I’m not an expert on this subject. I’m not even an ametur, just a marketing peon with some thoughts. If this interests you, definitely look into it more, do some research, make you own — better informed — opinions! Hopefully this blog will give you some ideas; us it as a jumping off point. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s have a look at a couple examples of what we mean by ‘AI’.
One way we use a basic form of this at Pickr is in our app. When you are hired through Pickr and you have our app on your phone, its able to use information about the time, location and weather to provide tailored reminders that help you get to work. For example, if your shift is early in the morning and it’s going to rain on your way home later. It will send you several reminders to help you wake up, as well as suggesting you take an umbrella for the walk home at the end of the shift. It isn’t being particularly clever, but it is able to interpret information and decide — on a basic level — what to do with it.
A more complex example is machine learning. Using machine learning a computer can teach itself to perform tasks far better than it could be programmed to do by a human. Say you had robot and you wanted it to be able to play basketball. If it was using machine learning, every time it took a shot it would give itself a score out of a hundred based on how close it got the ball to where it was aiming. Eventually the robot would be able to see which attempts were most successful based on the score they were given, and would repeat what it did in those attempts. Given enough time it would — theoretically — never miss a shot.
Using automation to solve automation.
Of course, if you have a perfect basketball playing machine, that doesn’t leave much room for actual human players. So how do we deal with the problem of artificial intelligence taking jobs that would otherwise be performed by humans, and leaving people without work?
Well, we’ve come across this problem before. The industrial revolution, and the agricultural revolution before it, created a similar situation. The introduction of machinery to almost every aspect of life suddenly meant that thousands of jobs became unnecessary virtually overnight. Before this point, the vast majority of people in history were farmers. Afterwards, machinery allowed farm owners to manage larger fields, growing better crops, with less need for help.
The result was similar to what we worry about now with AI. A lot of people finding the jobs that had always been available to them in the past were no longer available. However, it also created new opportunities. As people had to devote less time to just growing food to eat, they could learn their own trades, and as factories began to become more common, they needed people to work in them. As trains and other vehicles started to appear, it became possible to work somewhere outside of walking distance, meaning people had more choice.
In the end the very automation that created the problem in the first place also helped to eliminate it as well. It’s why we don’t live in a world where the job variety is limited to‘farmer’ or ‘another type of farmer’.
Is it possible then, that AI could do the same thing today? We believe so. At Pickr we use AI to help people find work, and to help businesses find people. We use the automation capabilities provided by AI to make that process faster and cheaper for everyone involved.
Still, the kind of work available is also going to change. People will need to learn new skills and start new jobs. At the moment, because the flexibility of our system allows users to be flexible too, Pickr is perfect for people who are studying but still need an income, or are starting their own business but want the security of being able to work. You can fit your work around whatever you need it to.
And as the way we work changes we want and need to keep up with it. In the future we hope to have a platform that makes freelance work — which is increasingly popular as people look for new ways of working in the modern world — easy by allowing new freelancers to connect with the clients the want without having to be ‘in the know’ or needing to network unnecessarily.
It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to solve or even predict every problem that will be created by the rise in automation; but it’s important that we start as soon as possible. AI is going to change the world; it’s up to us to make sure that change is for the better.
