Americans are generally confident that the booming AI will not take their jobs although they believe the technology will take other people’s jobs, according to a new poll.
This comes amid fears the technology will take away millions of jobs from the market across sectors with some businesses already laying off their staff as they automate processes.
But for Americans, most of them have a general understanding of AI technology, and they believe that it can be beneficial to the economy, according to the poll.
Efficient but,
Technology has created a space where AI tools are becoming more popular, and companies are scrambling to adopt these technologies into their workforce to improve creativity and productivity.
However, the adoption of AI technology has left some worrying about their job security with countries like Australia working towards creating regulations that will protect workers if AI is employed.
A new survey by Fox News has shown that Americans are generally not worried about AI taking their jobs. This follows reports by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Pew Research published in July that highlighted how 27% of jobs are at high risk of automation with 19% of Americans in jobs that are exposed to AI.
An understanding of AI
Now, the Fox News poll showed the majority of people understand the importance of AI to optimize operations and boost economic growth.
“Our poll revealed that Americans understand the importance of AI: half of Americans (48%) believe it to be important to America’s future economic success,” the article stated.
The poll asked Americans if they were worried about AI displacing American jobs in a general sense and one in five was not worried at all. They were asked to pick from the “not worried at all,” “somewhat worried,” and “very worried” categories. Four out of five were somewhat worried while one out of five was very worried.
The other poll asked if they were worried about their jobs being displaced by AI and three in five Americans were not worried at all while one in 10 was very worried.
“When it comes to potential job displacement by AI, it turns out that Americans feel confident AI won’t take their jobs but are worried it will take other people’s jobs.”
According to Fox, the poll was done with a sample representative of the whole US population.
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The affected industries
When asked which industries could benefit and get hurt from AI among the following: law, medicine, engineering, journalism, customer service, academia, publishing, management, K-12 education, manufacturing, and transportation, Americans said journalism and customer service are most likely to get hurt.
Already, there are reports of media organizations looking at ways of enhancing efficiency using AI tools. Media firms in Australia, India, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China, have already started putting AI tools to test, for instance, to write articles while AI-powered news anchors have also surfaced.
In the arts and entertainment industry, concerns have been raised over AI’s ability to compose prose, and lyrics or create images. The use of AI in the film industry has sparked strikes in Hollywood as actors and writers worry AI will affect their earnings and general livelihood.
The tech sector has not been spared as a monthly report from Challenger, Gray and Christmas showed over 4,000 job cuts in May alone within the sector and 3,900 were due to AI.
Overall, tens of thousands of tech jobs have been cut this year alone. Big names like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Zoom have driven workforce reductions, although they have attributed it to the challenging economic environment.
The confidence
According to the Fox article, American masses are less worried about AI taking over their jobs probably because they have a better understanding of the technology as well as a deeper knowledge of their own jobs.
One example is automated long-haul trucks, which have been long predicted to go autonomous. However, the technology to achieve this still lags.
While there might be a lot to worry about given the advancements in generative AI taking up jobs, there is also a need to note that these tools can be used to aid workers in making their jobs way easier.
It also looks like governments are working towards creating policies and regulations that govern the development and implementation of AI, which might give a bit of job security for the average worker.
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