Finding the Right Balance With AI
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- August 08, 2023
News Limited, the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire, recently revealed that it is producing 3,000 articles each week using generative artificial intelligence technology.
These articles are generated by a team of four staff on subjects such as the weather, traffic conditions and fuel prices and primarily appear in the group's regional or suburban titles, sometimes carrying a journalist's byline.
At the same time, News is closing many of its Australian titles. Over 100 titles no longer appear in print, and 36 have reportedly been closed down completely.
News has also announced a series of redundancies, with up to one in 20 staff set to lose their jobs after changes announced in February 2023, just after the company posted a 47% decline in earnings.
The AI moves at News are symptomatic not just of the dilemma facing traditional media but also point to AI's long-term impact on human employment.
Organizations may need to shed staff and replace them with AI to stay profitable. One of the costs of being able to stay in business will be staff headcount.
Employment dilemma
The forecasts by investment bank Goldman Sachs have reverberated around the world. AI investment will approach USD200 billion globally by 2025, raising GDP by 7%. AI could also replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs.
Just as the world is struggling to address AI's ethical use, it has yet to devise solutions to the employment dilemma. While the ultimate response in developed economies would be a "living wage" paid to people so they can sustain their lifestyles and continue to be consumers, this seems a bridge too far politically, at least for now.
In Australia, the Labor Party—currently in power in Canberra—is addressing this with a policy position on AI that seeks to balance the implementation of AI with the impact it will have on traditional industries which have been mass employers.
"Historically, we have overestimated the jobs we'd lose and vastly underestimated the ones we would create"
Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic has been charged with this task and has spent much of this year meeting with union and business leaders and also technologists in a quest to thrash out an approach that can deliver some of AI's benefits without creating what many fear will be a social downside in widespread unemployment.
If Australian unions have their way, one outcome is creating a separate government body to manage and regulate the economic impact of AI. The peak union body has warned that in previous economic structural adjustments, none as profound as AI, only one-third of the displaced workers go on to find secure employment again.
The unions want a "fair technological transition" and are optimistic that with sensitive implementation, AI has "great potential to improve, rather than reduce inequality."
The goal is to enact rules to protect against the harmful impact of AI while also lifting national productivity and competitiveness.
Overestimation of losses
This is a noble aim and may prove easier to say than to achieve, although some industry groups are optimistic about the Government's approach.
Kate Pounder, the head of the Tech Council of Australia, told the Sydney Morning Herald that she supported the Government's balanced approach.
She cited a 2013 academic study predicting that technology would wipe out 47% of jobs by the end of the previous decade and said, "Historically, we have overestimated the jobs we'd lose."
“And we vastly underestimated the ones we would create, as well as the training required to take advantage of the new jobs,” said Pounder.
She used the example of the accounting profession, which had been impacted by cloud computing. Instead of losing their jobs, accountants did less data entry. They engaged their clients on a more personalized and face-to-face basis, rediscovering the value they could add to their client relationships.
That positive example may not be able to be replicated in other industries, however. Manufacturing workers might need help to reinvent themselves in the same industry if their tasks are performed by AI-driven robots.
Minister Husic has warned the tech industry that they can't expect to be able to self-regulate. He says there are too many risk areas, and Australia needs a robust regulatory framework.
Unsurprisingly, there has been some industry pushback. Microsoft has urged a softer approach and says Australia should stay in step with international plans to regulate AI and that going it alone will hinder creativity and mean that Australia won't enjoy the full economic benefits of the technology.
From where we are now, all of this is speculation and conjecture, just as much as Government hopes that regulation can get the balance right between protecting workers and harnessing AI's potential.
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/Oscar Martin