The 4th industrial revolution, Cunningham: AI can affect about 43% of occupations, humans adapt to it

Around 43 per cent of jobs will be significantly affected by Artificial Intelligence (AI) by 2027 and it’s up to humans to adapt, says suitability and careers adviser Martin Cunningham.

According to him, AI also affects disinformation, for which he says in the interview for Geopost that “it is a double-edged sword.”

The author of the book dedicated to Artificial Intelligence also points out that the commercialization of cybercrime is possible because of AI.

Full interview:

The Geopost: You wrote a book about AI. Which is the best message to give for your readers about AI?

One of the reasons I wrote the book was I had lots of clients who were coming to me and saying, is AI going to take my job? And the reality is, no, it’s not.

The person who can adapt and augment with AI, understand the ethical and intelligent applications of AI, they’re the people who are going to take your job. So if you don’t adapt, if you don’t respond to that exponential shift that’s taking place now, and become more adaptable, you will be left behind but there are ways in which you can adapt and that by understanding what AI can and cannot do that’s the most important message really. Learn how AI can support what you need to do, learn how to be adaptable and pivot at pace.

The Geopost: How do you see AI now and could AI change the whole future?

Yeah, I mean AI is already impacting most jobs in the world. We are in the fourth industrial revolution. And this exponential shift is impacting on most jobs in some way, shape or form. The study of work survey for 2024 actually came out the other day and what that says is that 43% of all jobs are going to be significantly impacted by 2027. So if people don’t adapt to it they are going to be the ones that left behind. The good news is you can adapt to it. We’ve adapted throughout history. Human species is really good at it but but the ones that will just moan about it and create fear and threat about it are the ones who will be left behind. The ones who embrace it, there’s nothing you can do about it being here, it’s here. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

So you either embrace it and work out how to make your life and your work better or you get left behind. It’s as simple as that.

The Geopost: Can AI have impact on disinformation and how to protect?

I mean, we’ve already seen that to a great degree with the conflict in Ukraine recently. You’ve got AI-driven drones, you’ve got AI that is identifying potential targets for humans to then go in and check if it is a target.

You’ve got AI distributing images of politicians and military leaders with their voiceovers being dubbed by artificial intelligence, which isn’t actually them speaking, it’s the propagandists. Now, the good news is AI can be trained to look for those discrepancies, identify which ones need to be thoroughly looked at by a human eye, and then the humans can go in and double check it. So it’s a double-edged sword on the security issue.

False information is definitely out there. It’s happening all over the world, and it’s going to happen more. And cybercrime is also a threat. The commercialization of cybercrime is possible because of AI. But then again, so is the predictive analysis by law enforcement if we enhance our understanding of how to incorporate AI into crime pattern analysis and predictive patrolling and predictive outsourcing of law enforcement agencies to where they need to go and what they need to look at.

The Geopost: Could people get afraid from AI? Which is your best message for your book to give the readers?

It’s understandable why people are afraid of AI. The power of it is so immense. I mean, at the moment, ChatGPT is just predictive text. It’s very, very good predictive text, but it’s just predictive text. But AI is able to look at things on a medical basis and identify potential cancers that the human eye couldn’t see. So there’s so much potential in it, but is there potential for it to do harm? Yes, just like when the internet came out and the dark web. But if you think back all the way to the first Industrial Revolution, when we started using machines for the first time to really start to improve the productivity of people, people were afraid of that then.

The difference is, it took three or four generations to get used to those things and people had jobs for generations, not jobs for life. Now what’s going to happen is people are going to have four to ten different jobs and different specialties within their lifetime not within generations and the pace of change that we saw over the last hundred years is the pace of change we’re going to see in the next 10. So should you be slightly concerned about it? Yes. Should you fear it? No. You should have an anxiousness about you that drives you to find out more and push yourself ahead of that curve. Because we’re on the crest of the wave now and it will be exceptional for some, but it will only be exceptional for those who embrace it. Others will be left behind in this world.

/The Geopost