With swaths of white collar jobs at risk, the clock is ticking on the development of policy to meet this huge societal challenge.
Elon Musk is not most people’s idea of a classic technophobe, so when the owner of Twitter warns of the dangers of artificial intelligence, it is worth sitting up and taking notice. Fearful that a new generation of ever-smarter machines threatens life on Earth as we know it, Musk was one of many at the cutting edge of technological change calling for a six-month timeout in the training of new AI systems.
There is nothing new in the idea that the machines are coming, and they are out to get us. Techno-optimists are right to say that the same arguments were aired by Luddites in the early 19th century. By this token, the chatbot ChatGPT is to the fourth industrial revolution what the spinning jenny was to the first – a product that symbolises the dawning of a new era.
In the past, there has been a pattern to events. New technology has arrived on the scene and has offered the prospect of doing things quicker and better. Fears have been raised of mass unemployment as machines take the jobs previously done by humans. Eventually, the pessimists have been proved wrong, and the new technology has led to higher levels of employment.
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