Based on the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind AI lab, the rise of advanced AI will turn the white-collar job market the wrong way up and force a large number of “very unhappy” staff out of their jobs.
Mustafa Suleyman, a synthetic intelligence pioneer who left Google last 12 months, has joined a growing list of experts – including his former boss, Alphabet CEO Sundara Pichai – who has warned that rapid advances in technology could result in significant job losses.
“Undoubtedly, many tasks in the mental fields will look very different in the next five to 10 years,” Suleyman said at an event at GIC’s Bridge Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, in response to Financial Times.
“There will be a serious number of losers [and they] he will be very unhappy, very agitated,” he added.
Experts say advances in artificial intelligence may very well be a double-edged sword for the global economy – boosting productivity, whilst they cause radical changes in corporations and industries.
Last month, Goldman Sachs published an evaluation stating that AI tools “may lead to a 7% (or nearly $7 trillion) increase in global GDP and lift productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points over a 10-year period.”
At the same time, the bank warned that the technology could threaten the “automation” of as many as 300 million full-time jobs.
![Mustafa Suleiman](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000010894406.jpg?w=1024)
Suleyman asserted that the US and other governments will need to think about ways to support staff who lose their jobs on account of AI.
He introduced the idea of a universal basic income as one method to solve the problem – a view he shares with billionaire Elon Musk, which he proposed last 12 months this may develop into essential as artificial intelligence and robotics have modified the dynamics of work.
Suleiman said the affected staff would wish “material compensation”.
![Mustafa Suleiman](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000010894405.jpg?w=1024)
“It’s a political and economic measure that we’d like to begin talking seriously about,” he added.
Since leaving Google, Suleyman has launched his own chatbot initiative called Inflection AI.
Suleyman’s warning comes weeks after Pichai told CBS’ 60 Minutes that society needs to organize for major changes caused by AI in the coming years.
![Losing my job](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000007285874.jpg?w=1024)
Pichai admitted that he expects job losses amongst so-called “knowledge staff” equivalent to writers, accountants, architects and software engineers.
Notable critics include “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, who quit Google last month to talk freely about the technology’s dangers.
Along with potential job losses, Hinton warned that AI may very well be utilized by “bad actors” for a variety of nefarious purposes.