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Fred Benenson, previously VP of data at Kickstarter, wrote an interesting short “article in the Atlantic” on how artificial intelligence is definitely coming to tackle and solve many repetitive and straightforward tasks.
Actually the interesting part is not on the coming of AI, but the reflection on how high-skill positions will be impacted by the change.
Here a couple of nuggets:
[A]rtificial intelligence will transform higher-skill positions, too—in ways that demand more human judgment rather than less. And that could be a problem. As AI gets better at performing the routine tasks traditionally done by humans, only the hardest ones will be left for us to do.
The best-designed machine-learning systems are the ones that can pass on the unclear or low-confidence decisions and redirect them to humans. But when humans are looking only at the difficult, muddiest, most intractable cases, not only will morale suffer, but human workers’ chances of making the “right” decision will drop as well. The frustration will only be compounded when their accuracy, as humans, is compared with that of a robot, which will continue to pick off the easiest work.
In the future, we could expect to carry out more challenging, more difficult, less repetitive tasks. It sounds good, but how are we going to become good at that if possibilities to do the “easy” job will be far limited by the usage of far more efficient machines? How are we going to step up our game if we have only a giant step in front of us? How are we going to improve further?