So there\u2019s that. But for many of us it\u2019s a more banal and immediate question: is the proliferation of this technology \u2013 spanning machine learning, generative AI, robotics and automation \u2013 about to make us redundant?<\/p>\n
New Zealanders seem to be more worried than most.\u00a0A new Ipsos survey <\/a>of 32 countries asked about the impact on the job market across the next three to five years. It found 58% of us thought the technology would make things worse, with just 14% saying nah fine. We\u2019re the most pessimistic place in the world.<\/p>\n The findings are consistent with various research <\/a>pointing to serious levels of AI distrust in New Zealand, said Professor Ali Knott, a specialist in cognitive science and artificial intelligence at Victoria University of Wellington. Any number of factors could contribute to that attitude, he said, but it could be informed by the signals from the top.<\/p>\n The current government had been \u201cfairly evangelical\u201d about AI without simultaneously setting out \u201cthe necessary transparency or regulatory mechanisms\u201d, he said. Distrust may also stem from the areas that organisations using AI prioritise. Deloitte NZ\u2019s Human Capital Trends Report, published <\/a>in April, found that \u201ctrust, ethics and data governance risk becoming blind spots\u201d.<\/p>\n New Zealand organisations are placing less emphasis than their international counterparts around the world on \u201cAI ethics, workforce data trustworthiness, and managing AI\u2019s human impacts \u2013 areas that become more critical as AI use scales\u201d. Just 50% of New Zealand respondents, compared with 69% globally, rated balancing benefits, risks, ethics and potential conflict in AI as very or extremely important.<\/p>\n That was of particular concern, the report noted, given the unique importance of M\u0101ori data sovereignty.<\/p>\n The Ipsos survey was completed before the most recent headlines about AI replacing human work, as advanced by the finance minister, Nicola Willis. She urged <\/a>public sector workers, who had for too long been \u201cscared of AI\u201d, to embrace the technology to offset the cut in head count demanded by last month\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n The public servants of Lambton Quay are not the only ones worried about the robots. A study published in Australia this month, for example, identified 82 different occupations that face serious disruption. More on that in a moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the US, artificial intelligence is now the main reason <\/a>cited for cutting jobs. Some of that is real, some of it is \u201cAI washing\u201d, according to many, including Sam Altman. Perhaps the most visible figurehead in artificial intelligence today as the outspoken boss of OpenAI, Altman said in January<\/a>, \u201cthere\u2019s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there\u2019s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in 2019, Altman had envisioned a scorched earth, saying AI would \u201cprobably replace most of the jobs people do today\u201d. Speaking at a Sydney conference <\/a>last month, however, he said he had overestimated the likely impact, and advances in AI would not lead to the \u201cjobs apocalypse\u201d he had earlier feared.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whether projecting apocalypse or merely a blizzard, every forecast in this territory needs to come with heavy caveats.<\/p>\n Knott was one of three New Zealand authors of a substantial 2021 study <\/a>examining the ways that AI is set to impact work and employment. Back then, they were disinclined to make specific predictions of what was to come. After five years, and bearing in mind that Chat GPT was not released until 2022, Knott says he sticks by their approach, of encouraging those designing policy to look at different scenarios from a macro perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cI much prefer the idea of saying we do not know yet, and what we should do instead is formulate different scenarios,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of AI future tasks are so uncertain that they require fast reactions from government. I think all we can do is organise the possibilities into coherent alternatives, and then say: keep an eye out for this thing or that thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The first was a positive vision in which \u201cthere are no widespread job losses, because productivity means that everyone can just do more, and everyone makes more money\u201d. Another imagined \u201cwidespread job losses, but with some of the profits from AI remaining onshore, because the productivity, the automation comes from New Zealand-owned companies. If that\u2019s the case, there are immediate options for redistribution of AI profits back to the community, so that you can address the challenge of people who\u2019ve lost their jobs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the \u201cbad scenario\u201d, said Knott. That imagined \u201cwidespread job losses, and all the AI profits flowing offshore. That\u2019s the really damaging one, because then you don\u2019t have such an easy way of redistributing the money that\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n New Zealand could learn from instructive scenario-based work, said Knott, published by the OECD <\/a>and the UK government<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But what is AI doing to jobs, right now?<\/p>\n The bleak horizon<\/p>\nFinance minister Nicola Willis (Photo: Dean Purcell\/New Zealand Herald via Getty Images)
\nWhat we know and what we don\u2019t<\/p>\n