The Banking Executive Magazine - September 2023 Issue

Career Chronicle ties could be either replaced or as- sisted by AI; 23 percent of workers had jobs that were the least exposed to AI, in which the most important activities were farther from the reach of AI; and jobs with a high level of exposure to AI tended to be in higher-paying fields, in which col- lege educations and analytical skills could be pluses. “AI is distinguished from past technologies that have come over the last 100-plus years,” Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher at Pew, said of the results. “It is reaching up from the factory floors into the office spaces where white- collar, higher-paid workers tend to be. Will it be a slow-moving force or a tsunami? That’s unknown.” Ultimately, this trend may be deter- mined by how quickly the latest gen- erative AI applications, such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, evolve. “It is their ability to write text, compose music, and create digital art that has garnered headlines and persuaded consumers and house- holds to experiment on their own,” noted McKinsey & Company’s latest research published in June, which es- timated that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global econ- omy across the 63 use cases the con- sulting firm analysed. “As a result, a broader set of stakeholders are grap- pling with generative AI’s impact on business and society but without much context to help them make sense of it.” Such trends also raise deep philo- sophical questions over the nature, utility and value of human input ver- sus machine input for delivering su- perior results. While this generation of generative AI has demonstrated impressive knowledge, it has also fre- quently delivered misleading or out- right incorrect information, which underscores not only the imperfect nature of the current technology but also the vital importance of such human qualities as cognition, judge- ment and emotional intelligence that are required in many jobs to deliver not only the highest but also the most nuanced performances. “We have to think about these things as produc- tivity-enhancing tools, as opposed to complete replacements,” Anu Madgavkar, a partner at the McKin- sey Global Institute, told Business In- sider in June, adding that human judgement must be applied to these technologies to avoid error and bias. Indeed, that “enhancing, not replac- ing” idea has significant implications for the nature of the labour market of the future, such that while millions of jobs may be lost due to AI, many mil- lions more will be created in their places to support and complement the technologies of tomorrow. “The creation of new jobs resulting from the ability to create and deliver… new types of goods and services… ha[s] far outpaced the number of jobs displaced,” Steven Miller, pro- fessor emeritus of information sys- tems at Singapore Management University (SMU), told CNBC in Feb- ruary. Dimitris Papanikolaou, a pro- fessor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management at North- western University, also noted that, as of now, people working alongside AI rather than being replaced by it is the likelier scenario. “There are far more opportunities for using AI for augmenting the work of human em- ployees than for fully automating the work of humans,” Papanikolaou noted. But such predictions are, understand- ably, doing little to allay ordinary workers’ fears over their future em- ployment prospects. Perhaps most glaringly in the spotlight at present is the strike of Hollywood screenwriters and actors from the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Tele- vision and Radio Artists (SAG- AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Many in the indus- try are concerned that stringent reg- ulations are needed to prevent AI tools from replicating and diluting their control over their work, thus re- ducing their chances of earning a liv- ing. “Artificial intelligence poses an exis- tential threat to creative professions, and all actors and performers de- serve contract language that protects them from having their identity and talent exploited without consent and pay,” SAG-AFTRA’s president, Fran Drescher, announced on July 15. Meanwhile, the WGA’s demands, is- sued on May 1, read: “AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and [works covered by union contracts] can’t be used to train AI.” In response, the Al- liance of Motion Picture and Televi- sion Producers(AMPTP), which represents employers, said that its of- fers included an “AI proposal which protects performers’ digital like- nesses, including a requirement for performers’ consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for dig- ital alterations of a performance”. This strike provides a glimpse of what will likely come as AI makes in- roads into virtually all industries. It also demonstrates workers’ anxieties over AI’s replicative nature and its possible impacts on hundreds of mil- lions of lives in the future. Indeed, a July 28-30 survey of US consumers conducted by Canada-based polling firm Leger sought to understand their perspectives on the SAG-AFTRA strike and their broader concerns over AI related to their jobs. “63 per- cent of U.S. consumers think govern- ments need to regulate AI to reduce the risk of it replacing human jobs, while 37 percent think AI will in- evitably replace some human jobs, the market will adjust, and people will find new opportunities,” the sur- vey found. “45 percent of U.S. con- sumers are concerned about AI replacing human workers in their line of work, while 29 percent are unconcerned. 19 percent are not looking for work/currently working, and 6 percent don’t know.” Seventy- three percent of US consumers also support including a disclaimer with all AI-generated content so that it is clearly identified. ISSUE 177 SEPTEMBER 2023 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 43