Ex-Google exec: The idea that AI will create new jobs is '100% crap'
By: Ashton Jackson (CNBC)
Well, duh. Passive investors aren't dumping cash into artificial intelligence to increase business costs. Those who expect their money to work for them expect the cheapest labor.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer at Google X, the company's innovation lab, says AI is likely coming for your role — whether you're in the C-suite or an entry-level worker.
The idea that artificial intelligence will create jobs is "100% crap," Gawdat said Monday on the "Diary of a CEO" podcast, using his own AI startup, Emma.love, as an example. He and two other software experts built the app with the help of AI, a project that would have required "350 developers in the past," he said.
Gawdat has worked in tech for over 30 years. He was in the C-suite at Google X for almost five years tackling major problems facing humanity, like energy, climate change and internet access.
Even the jobs you may think require humans will be eliminated, including video editors, podcasters and executives, said Gawdat. Bill Gates has predicted that doctors and teachers will also be replaced in the coming years.
Those who have the most promising outlook are professionals who are the best at their jobs, said Gawdat, author of "Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World." But even they won't be safe forever.
Artificial general intelligence is "going to be better than humans at everything, including being a CEO," said Gawdat. "There will be a time where most incompetent CEOs will be replaced."
A competitive edge in the workforce
Other leaders say AI isn't all doom and gloom. Billionaires Mark Cuban and Jensen Huang, for example, say learning AI skills — in addition to strengthening soft skills — will make you highly desirable in the workplace and give you a competitive edge. After all, somebody has to program, develop and train the chatbots, and teach others to do the same.
Both Cuban, who has a free AI boot camp for kids, and Huang, whose company develops the chips and software powering many of today's generative systems, use artificial intelligence on a daily basis for tasks like writing first drafts, sending emails and getting medical advice.
Though 41% of employers globally plan to downsize their workforce due to AI (48% in the U.S.), 77% of employers are planning to upskill their current workforce to better work alongside AI, according to The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs report. Moreover, 47% are looking at transitioning employees from declining roles into other roles in the organization.
Put simply, companies aren't going on a firing spree to replace human workers with robots right now.
An AI-powered future may not be all bad
Though Gawdat says the job market will suffer greatly due to AI, this economic shift may help spark necessary change to our outlook on work, giving people more time to spend with family, cultivate new hobbies, pursue philanthropy and find an identity outside of a job title.
"We were never made to wake up every morning and just occupy 20 hours of our day with work. We're not made for that," he said. "We defined our purpose as work. That's a capitalist lie."
An AI-powered society would require some kind of universal basic income (UBI), said Gawdat, a social welfare policy that ensures all citizens of a community regularly receive a payment from the government without work requirements.
The other caveat to this "utopia" is the potentially dangerous consequences of the "hunger for power, greed and ego" as AI bots report to "stupid leaders," said Gawdat, calling for ethical use and regulations around artificial intelligence.
No matter the impact of artificial intelligence, or the approaches different leaders take, one thing remains undisputable: AI is no longer a curiosity, or a plot line in a sci-fi film. It's revolutionizing the way people live and work. And it's here to stay.
"This is real," Gawdat said. "This is not science fiction."
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The fly in this dystopian future is that AI hasn't really started competing with itself yet. And no human can predict what will happen.
Maybe one of those new hobbies we're supposed to cultivate is social activism. What are the passive investors going to do then? Let them eat cake?
Correct, there is no way that I can see AI net increasing available good jobs. I see only a net decrease. Problematically so.
I don't see AI generating large profits, either. Consumers need income and no one is bothering to replace jobs as the source of that income. The artificial attempts to avoid deflation that are currently entrenched in out economy will ultimately implode the current economy. We're going to need an entirely new economic model.
I agree.
It's already starting to take out middle management jobs and other unnecessary positions, not that companies needed an excuse to remove jobs that don't make, or save, money.
That should be amended to read:
Who knows how many AI jobs it will create... especially when it becomes self-replicating...
This is Pollyana thinking . Mark Cuban is big on AI, so he hopes it will expand or maintain the same number of jobs as long as people make themselves "highly desirable".
There is a large percentage of human beings who have no desire whatsoever to create, employ, or repair and maintain AI entities. People who dont like working with numbers , dont like dealing with precision requirements, dont like interacting with machines, etc will never make themselves "highly desirable" to employers in an AI world. And there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who fit that description. What will they all do in this AI future?
What is going to happen is that people will be given money for not working, on a mass scale, in order to create enough consumers to buy the products and services the robots are creating.
@mochafrappawhat
1 year ago