Those twice-yearly trips to LinkedIn to halfheartedly update your CV can take its toll on a person, can’t they? All those ex-colleagues and long-forgotten schoolmates with their seemingly-great jobs and their personal successes and their ability to form meaningful relationships – feels a shit, doesn’t it?
Anyway, now you have an extra thing to worry about, because in a few years you’re going to feel intellectually and professionally inferior to robots as well as your fellow humans!
Yup – according to a new study from Oxford and Yale Universities, machines are going to overtake humans at pretty much every task in less than 50 years. They’ll be translating languages better than us by 2024. They’ll be writing high school essays by 2026. They’ll be driving trucks in 2027. They’ll be manning (robotting?) shops by 2031. But at least we can have sex with some of them, eh?!
And these advances will have “huge social consequences”, according to the authors. AI has the capacity to put millions out of work – and is likely to have the biggest impact on people already in low-paid work. The White House has already released a report about the impact of AI on the future of work – and they say that those who are on minimum wage are the most likely to be replaced by robots in coming years.
There’s also the complications of AI-based policy, with many machine learning experts concerned about the potential impact it’ll have on “law enforcement, military technology and marketing”.
But hey, don’t worry – the likelihood of AI-related human extinction is only at 5%! We’ll be fine! Probably!
