Who's afraid of the AI job-snatchers?

Rob Young (0:02)

Hello, I'm Rob Young, welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

Today will artificial intelligence take our jobs? We look at the history of technological innovations and employment and compare them to what's happening today.

Simon Johnson (0:17)

What they're asking or offering to do there is to replace human cognition with an algorithm. The various forms of mechanization we had before are either replacing physical labor or complementing human cognition.

Rob Young (0:31)

We'll assess the impact of AI on the job market right now and ask whether we would rather deal with a bot or a person.

Vicky Redwood (0:38)

We don't know yet quite how people will react to a world in which AI can in theory provide all these things. But I think time will prove that for most people, for most things, they do still value that human touch.

Rob Young (0:49)

That's all on Business Daily from the BBC.

Artificial Intelligence is already writing computer code, drafting legal documents and answering customer service questions. Some of the biggest names in tech say that AI will revolutionize how we work. There seems to be a general fear the technology could make huge swathes of workers redundant. The Pope said recently the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.

SPEAKER_4 (1:24)

Artificial Intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and indicating paths forward.

Rob Young (1:41)

Even those responsible for Artificial Intelligence are concerned. Geoffrey Hinton is often called the godfather of AI.

Geoffrey Hinton (1:49)

The large companies are investing huge amounts of money in it. They have to replace jobs to make that money back. That's where the big money is, in selling companies things that will replace workers.

Rob Young (2:02)

So are fears for the future of work justified, or is this just the latest version of a panic humans have been having for centuries?

I want to look back at what history can tell us about big technological leaps. And we're better to look at that than the Science Museum here in central London, which has exhibits such as the first television set, the first computer, and even a capsule that's been around the moon. I'm here to meet one of the curators, Laura Joy Peters.

Laura Joy Peters (2:38)

It's a very, very rusty old tube. It's in fact an Edison tube. It's an electricity cable, probably from the first public supply of electricity anywhere in the world. So it changed how people worked, and it meant that we could do work later in the day, or we could do work at night. And obviously there are parts of the world where electricity and that lighting isn't as widespread. But it does change the way we work, because we're not tied to the rhythms of the sun, the moon and stars. But actually we could have 24-hour work.

Rob Young (3:13)

Well, we've now moved to a different part of the Science Museum, where there is a satellite. Laura Joy, tell me about this.

Laura Joy Peters (3:20)

So we are standing underneath a model of a GPS satellite. GPS is an American global positioning system.

Rob Young (3:28)

It's much bigger than I thought it would be. It's probably the length of a big London bus.

Laura Joy Peters (3:34)

It is. It's ginormous. It's a gold box. It's got these two huge wings.

GPS is really interesting to me because GPS has absolutely transformed how we move around the world in one generation. So previously, my parents were very good at using maps, and they would use a map to plan their route when they're driving. Automobiles also are really interesting general purpose technology.

But in one generation, that skill of using maps has been lost because we absolutely just rely on GPS now. We have it in our phones. We don't need to plan a route in advance. It's changed how we work in a million ways.

Rob Young (4:12)

Laura Joy Peters, thanks very much for showing me around.

Laura Joy Peters (4:14)

Thank you very much, Rob.

Rob Young (4:16)

For more than two centuries, each big new technology has sparked the same fear that machines will take odd jobs. But the evidence suggests something subtler. Take typing. It used to be a job.

Now it's just part of almost every white collar job. This is something that academics have been trying to get to the bottom of.

SPEAKER_7 (4:40)

Okay, very welcome to the Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden, where the Nobel Prize Award ceremony takes place every year on the 10th of this year.

Rob Young (4:49)

Simon Johnson won the Nobel Prize for Economics with two colleagues in 2024 for work on how nations became prosperous. He's an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.