Posted by In a previous post, I wondered why there is so little talk about the fact that artificial intelligence could act as an artificial manager. Now let’s consider what the consequences of such an invention could be. What would happen if one day you met a humanoid robot in your chair who had just fired your boss?
To start, watch this interview on YT: Full interview: “Godfather of artificial intelligence” talks impact and potential of AI
In my opinion, it would really change a lot. For example:
First, everyone keeps saying that artificial intelligence will take jobs away first from people with higher education, hitherto working with their heads, creative, solving complex social problems. Note that at the beginning of the last century, and perhaps even earlier, when the rapid progress in automating mechanical work began, it was the people working with their muscles who were quickly being replaced by machines. Since 2022, when ChatGPT turned everyone’s heads, voices have been raised that workers with higher education have come to the forefront of the race for who will lose their jobs first. And suddenly plumbers, auto mechanics, construction workers can rest easy!
Your manager, who is a human being, is part of this suddenly threatened group of people who may lose their jobs. By the way, I’ll write that when I started popularizing the idea of an artificial manager a few years ago, many managers told me that they didn’t want to talk about an artificial manager and didn’t want any experiments in this area, because… they were afraid they would lose their jobs!
Secondly, the threat is not only that the so-called white collars will leave the high office buildings in a hurry, banished from them by the robot manager. After all, they have to do something in life after this change! So it will become necessary to apprentice them to other jobs, which may take months or years. It will be an expensive process, but inevitable. It is hard to imagine that artificial intelligence will not need humans for many aspects of its existence – to learn from humans how the world works, to have humans mechanically relevant to perform tasks (a bit like a printer being an executive device to a computer), to defend itself with the help of humans against rebellion… humans who may, however, be quite good at rebelling. People, therefore, have to learn the new job – this will cost money and take time.
Third, there is the question of how to distribute the value created by artificial intelligence. It’s not just about goods, such as products or services. The earliest to come to grips with the problem can be called the question: whose is it? “That” which has been written, composed, drawn by artificial intelligence. For example, when you ask ChatGPT for a recipe for scrambled eggs, this problem can be ignored. This is because almost anyone who has seen eggs, a pan and butter could make scrambled eggs simply based on common knowledge.
However, if we task ChatGPT with writing a story about a naughty artificial intelligence that got out of hand, then a text of, say, 3,000 characters will be produced, and then the question is very legitimate: whose is it? Is it just a compilation of other texts or words (a bit like a random word generator) or is it a copyrightable work? Lawyers will immediately say that only a man-made work can be protected by copyright, but… other lawyers will find arguments that such a story should also be protected or has legal consequences. Thus, this will not be an easy dilemma to resolve.
I will talk about other consequences of an artificial manager in my next blog, but for now, still see an interesting article on the consequences of using artificial intelligence in management:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338554514_Impact_of_Artificial_Intelligence_on_Management