Running head: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMPLOYMENT 1

Artificial Intelligence and Employment

Hanh Hong Nguyen

City University of Seattle

June 14, 2020

Abstract

The essay will discuss the reason why Artificial Intelligence cannot replace all

employees. First, this will argue in terms of education, why it cannot replace the teacher. Then,

the paper will present the reason why the replacement of technology in medical is impossible.

Lastly, this essay will claim for Artificial Intelligence cannot replace workers in the company

and manufacturing. Then, this will protect the arguments in the counterclaim part. In the end, this

will discuss the future of Artificial Intelligence and human.

Artificial Intelligence and Employment

The world has gone through many industrial revolutions and now it is in the industrial

revolution 4.0 with great progress. Through this revolution, along with the development of

civilization, Artificial Intelligence was born and developing strongly, it can do things that people

cannot do. It is changing human life with smart technology, some people seem to feel excited

about this, however, there are also some feel apprehensive about its future effects. Artificial

Intelligence is predicted to replace some jobs in the future, can raise the unemployment rate.

Artificial Intelligence can have a bad effect on employment; however, it cannot replace all the

employees in the future, and this essay will make arguments in three aspects are education,

medical and manufacture.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

The phrase ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was named by computer scientist John McCarthy in

1956 and described it as ‘science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially

intelligent computer programs’ (Hellmann, 2019). According to Frankenfield (2020), AI is a

technology which simulate human intelligence and apply to machines, programs to think and act

like human. When mention about AI, most people will think of robots, however, AI is not only

robots. It works based on the principle of human intelligence, mimic and solve things from

simple to complex. Frankenfield (2020) also provide two types of AI: weak and strong. Weak AI

is designed for a particular job such as games, virtual assistance like Siri, Alexa. Strong AI is a

system, it is more complex and complicated, it is designed to handle works without human

involvement.

Since it was discovered, the application of AI is very wide in every sectors and industry.

In medical, it is used to treatment and surgery, in technology it produces smart device like self-
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driving car, in games like chess, and even in the financial industry, AI also used to help the

bank's fraud department (Frankenfield,2020). It shows its remarkable progress when in 1997, a

computer from IBM defeated a professional chess player after six games, or AI can learn and

improve itself then it defeated five top players in poker game Texas Hold’em (Hellmann, 2019).

A study from Oxford University predicted that 47% of U.S. jobs could be automated away by

2025, this means 75 million of jobs will be gone (Frank, Pring & Roehrig, 2017). And recently,

AI has just replaced dozens of MSN news production workers in Microsoft (Baker, 2020). As

can be seen, AI is developing strongly and gradually replace human jobs.

Why AI cannot reduce all the jobs?

Although smart and no salary required, AI will never replace all human jobs with the

following reasons.

The first reason is that AI cannot do all the jobs in education. Applying technology in

education is good, and it is shown increasingly frequently in schools. However, ‘skills-based

training, combined with ever-growing technologies, have overshadowed personal creativity,

humor, imagination, intellectual excellence, dialogue, collaborative learning, compassion, and

spiritual sensitivity, which, in turn, has diminished the educational purpose’ (Guilherme, 2019).

Besides, the relationship between teachers and parents is very important because, through the

exchange, they can reinforce to support their child. A good relationship can help the children

express their emotions effectively and developing their health, their personalities (Guilherme,

2019). Teachers appeared to be a model especially small children to develop, they have a lot of

effects. AI can teach and give information but talking, inspire, or share experiences for students,

only teachers can do it. In addition to providing knowledge, it also requires understanding as

well as bringing teaching methods appropriate to each person. Guilherme (2019) also points out
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that whenever there is a debate, AI cannot argue and accept the criticism, cannot adapt oneself to

the circumstances, and follow a new way suggested by the students. This makes students feel

constrain and unable to grow their personality. Lastly, technology is becoming a standard for

schools and universities to measure progress and success; however, a study shows that applying

technology is creating the inequalities (Guilherme, 2019). Applying technology in teaching is

good, however, it requires harmonious and balanced coordination.

The second one is that AI cannot replace doctors. With the help of AI, nowadays

hospitals use it to diagnose some health problems like cancer. Like teaching a student mentioned

above, healing requires treatment methods that suitable for each person with different health and

atopic conditions and doctors are the only person can understand and do this. Personal privacy is

also another problem. Sometimes, we have to analyze the face to see the sign of the disease, if

the system does this is attacked by a personal data attack, lots of patients’ profile will be stolen

and can affect their daily life. Moreover, responsibility, an issue that currently cannot be

answered. If there is a misdiagnosed, who will take responsibility if doctors did not involve in

the diagnose or how can people blame if doctors take the recommendation from AI (Oakden-

Rayner, 2017). Till now, AI is supposed to be a support tool rather than a replacement. This also

agrees with many experts. Eldon Richards, technology director of Recondo Technologies said in

a journal:

‘If reviewing the ethics of a decision, or complex data or one-off decision, AI is not good at

those today. AI is very far off when it comes to those capabilities. The mundane, routine things

we do, like typing in a word processor, AI us simplifying those things for us, so now we're

shifting our focus from these simple tasks to things that require a little more training. I certainly

do not see unemployment going up’ (Lagasse, 2018).

This idea also agreed by Mary Sun, an AI researcher at First Derm and medical student at Mount

Sinai Medical Center when she said AI is a good tool for people to receive suggestions and

double-checking (Lagasse, 2018). Moreover, caring and empathy is a very important term in the

relationship between doctors and patients, it shows their respect and sincerity, which can

motivate the patients a lot, especially those who need physical therapy, that machines cannot do.

AI is supporting a lot in the field of medical, however, its complete replacement is not possible.

The last one is that AI cannot replace all the employees in the company. It can be clearly

seen that sometimes, AI can do better and more productive than humans, especially in

calculating. Creativity is very important in working when a person is competent with their jobs,

they usually try to improve to make their work more effective and productive. While AI cannot

do this because they are just machines and do preprogrammed jobs. Besides, also like when

studying, working also demands for teamwork and debate to make the work, the product better,

which AI cannot do. Adaptability is another problem of AI, when there is a change in the work, a

good employee can adapt and acquire, while machines are preprogrammed, ‘If an industry shift

requires a quick pivot in a new direction, tech often has to be deliberately redirected (or

replaced) to keep up’, Thompson (2019) wrote in her paper. Another reason is staffs have

knowledge of business, they understand the situation while AI is ‘only as smart as the data it’s

given’ (Thompson, 2019); using their knowledge, humans can behave appropriately. Last but not

least, although smart and productive, sometimes machine still make mistakes and this need

supervisors to control this. Applying technology in manufacture and company is very good and

its potential of taking all the jobs is impossible.

Besides posing a threat to human jobs, AI also supposed to be dangerous for human life.

Taulli (2019) quoted Stephen Hawking’s words, the legendary physicist, in a Web Summit

conference in 2017, he warned about the danger of AI:

‘Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event

in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new

ways for the few to oppress the many. It could bring great disruption to our economy.’

And Taulli (2019) also found that other experts like Elon Musk, Bill Gates have the same worry

as Stephen Hawking. Therefore, controlling the development of AI is very important, people

need to find ways to control.

Counterclaim

On the contrary, some people still believe that AI can reduce all human occupation with

some of its benefits. In education, AI can replace teachers in teaching students by programming,

install information for them. However, teachers play a role in observing and focusing on issues

of communication, emotions, which machines cannot replace people. In medical, AI helps a lot,

especially in contagious disease cases, which can endanger for healthcare staff. Or in diagnosis,

400,000 deaths caused by over 12 million diagnostic mistakes each year, this is just the number

in the United States (Frank, Pring & Roehrig, 2017). Applying technology can help reduce this

problem. But every person has different health condition so doctors observe to decide treatment

methods, and AI cannot do this. If there is an emergency circumstance, whether AI can cope

with it or not. Lastly, in company and manufacture, automation is becoming more and more

popular. But it still needs supervisors to control the systems. Creativity is also required by a lot

of companies in recruitment, which AI does not have. The AI’s potential of replacing all people
 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMPLOYMENT 8

jobs is not possible because it still has some problems remaining and human is the only can do

this. The biggest problem is they do not have emotion.

The future for Artificial Intelligence

However, without AI, human cannot do their job effective and such amazing like today.

People should prepare for a future of working with AI, besides developing it people also need to

control them. In order to meet the demand of using AI, education also have to offer appropriate

training programs, this means educational need to change (Hoppe, Kay & Verdejo, 2003). In

medical, the co-operate with technology also very important because it will have doctors reduce

pressure in their stressful work. Newman and Blanchard (2019) also mention that companies also

have to change, they wrote: ‘The world is changing. Business is changing. Consumer needs and

investor expectations are changing.’, this means companies also have to apply technology, this is

not optional, it is compulsory. ‘They must think of themselves as technology companies as well’

(Newman and Blanchard, 2019) wrote, this is need to meet the consumers, investors’ demand.

Besides, workers also have to improve themselves in order not to get backward in modern life

with technology is getting higher and higher (Cribb & Glover, 2018). The cooperation between

human and AI have a lot of potential, it can make the world more and more developed.

Conclusion

This essay has discussed the reason why AI cannot replace all human jobs in three fields

are education, medical, and business. Through this, people can clearly understand that AI will

not take all the jobs in the future although there are some arguments against it. Moreover, the

cooperation between AI and human is possible, with the help of AI, jobs will be easier and more

productive. However, people should control their development because it can pose some threat to

human life.
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References

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them with artificial intelligence. The Seattle Times. Retrieved from

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msn-news-production-workers-and-replacing-them-with-artificial-intelligence/

Cribb, J., & Glover, D. (2018). Don't worry about the robots : How to survive and thrive in the

new world of work. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Frankenfield, J. (2020). Artificial Intelligence (AI). Investopedia. Retrieved from

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/artificial-intelligence-ai.asp

Frank, M., Pring, B., & Roehrig, P. (2017). What to do when machines do everything : How to

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Hellmann, M. (2019). AI 101: What is artificial intelligence and where is it going?. The Seattle

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Hoppe, H., Kay, J., & Verdejo, M. (Eds.). (2003). Artificial intelligence in education : Shaping

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Lagasse, J. (2018). Why artificial intelligence won't replace doctors. Healthcare Finance.

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