Unemployment and Underemployment

I think it’s likely that the pace of job automation will outstrip job creation in the short term and cause a lot of unemployment and underemployment. In the Industrial Revolution you could jump off of any unskilled labor job, take some courses, learn some new skills, and find a new, likely higher paying job. What’s different this time is that we now have AIs and machine learning algorithms that can replicate many of the cognitive skills these individuals would be pursuing, and they can do it much faster. In many winning cases, we will see people partnering with AI and robotic systems to deliver productivity not possible with artificial intelligence or humans alone.

Neil Jacobstein

Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Institute; Chair, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Singularity University