What Are the Main Types of AI?
AI is everywhere at once. The average AI user may only be familiar with generative AI – the ChatGPTs of this world – you put in a question, the AI spits out an answer, often with incredible speed. Fast enough for the average person to reasonably ask how on Earth you were able to read and analyze and answer the question I just asked in a split second. Then there’s the AI you use without even knowing it. Netflix recommends, Spotify recommends known as AI recommendations.
Agent AI – An AI that can take actions on your behalf such as answering emails. Predictive AI – AI that can assess risk, check whether you are covered for an insurance claim. And the list goes on. It’s like software because it’s already so deeply embedded in almost every aspect of our lives that something like a set of Christmas tree lights has become impossible to untangle.
Is AI the Biggest Disruption Since the Industrial Revolution?
The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, recently spoke to students at the University of Arizona. He spoke of the great disruption in society since the industrial revolution, only that this would happen at lightning speed and affect all aspects of society. Schmidt’s words were greeted with enthusiasm by the graduating students. So, has the pushback against AI saturation already started and if so is there anything that can be done to stop it and equally whether we can control it or not? After all, if the US does not win the race for AI dominance, China will surely ‘hold all the cards’ to describe the current occupant of the White House.
AI Job Losses Are No Longer a Fear of the Future
A clear and present threat from AI is to the global workforce. Finance Monthly has reported that layoffs due to AI are almost a daily occurrence – Standard Chartered, Meta, Coinbase to name but a few. According to a recent study by Goldman Sachs 300 million jobs are exposed globally to AI. This does not mean the loss of 300 million jobs, but it creates a huge disruption for the world’s workers. Therefore, it is easy to understand the concerns surrounding AI that are created day by day. It is easy to understand why Schmidt is disappointed and as a parent you may feel very concerned about what job opportunities will be left for your children when they finish school and university. One striking example of this is coding over the past few years as many schools and universities have been pushing hard to get computer science and coding taken up by students, but this too is being attacked by AI. Indeed, as someone who doesn’t have the first idea of how to code, I was able to create a simple training app using Claude to do all the coding for me – it took about 5 minutes.
Here is the Catch-22 – more integration of AI leads to fewer jobs, fewer jobs means lower tax revenues and higher social budgets and at least fewer customers will spend their money with companies. Therefore, the economic picture and perspective will change in that companies will ‘grow’ not through more sales, more customers but will be seen to grow through increased profits – at least in the near term. If company X turns over $100m a year and most of that turnover is employees at $50m keeping things simple the company makes a profit of $50m a year. Slash labor costs by 90% due to the integration of AI and automation the company now makes a profit of 95 million dollars a year. In the short term Wall Street is very happy but the can that has been kicked down the road is waiting, coming and going nowhere. What if your customer falls off a cliff and there are not enough jobs to do, who will buy the product? So, while the short-term looks good for companies in terms of rationalizing savings with AI the medium-term is less certain.
AI Arms Race Makes Control Difficult
The counter to all this doom and gloom is the fact that AI is a great force, it will be able to cure cancer, it will solve global warming, it will solve world hunger. These high and noble aspirations can be truly life-changing in a practical sense and no one in their right mind would argue that achieving these goals would not be a miracle. No doubt the tech bros would say everything will be fine. To them, absolutely. Well, that remains to be seen. The story is if there is no humanity left to save? What if low employment and low spending power undermine the basis of capitalism, what if civil unrest leads to wars, what if AI war leads to a big mistake involving the world’s superpowers or the so-called middle powers. This is obviously a lot going on and a pessimistic view but as things stand there is little regulation of AI as the US and China are locked in an AI arms race and neither nation wants to cut themselves off from the law and lose the race, which comes second to the losers.
Humanity is asked to trust 4-5 people (in the US at least) like Altman, Musk, Photsi, Zuckerberg, Amodei, to rule the world and the life of almost every Westerner. Should they be trusted? Can the community choose? Governments around the world must exercise full confidence and the public is asked to accept the tsunami of disruption that is beginning to crash on the West Coast right now. The truth is that the average Joe is a passenger on the world’s fastest rocket to the Moon and at the moment there is no way to cancel the mission, it will take the governments of the world to work together for the greater good, such as the US and China, to have any kind of control of the AI rocket ship.
