Artificial intelligence has a great potential to “revolutionize” the business world.
If programmers who were able to develop generative AI systems did not think that their jobs would be at stake after the systems they developed began to take over their work!
Technology companies used to hire people specializing in programming and writing codes to develop software and various solutions, but some of these companies are now relying on artificial intelligence software to carry out their work quickly and at low costs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Software industry workers
During the last period, artificial intelligence solutions have emerged to be able to perform many of the jobs that were carried out by ordinary people and are being replaced by advanced technological systems, at the forefront of which were the jobs of workers in the software industry, which economists call “skill-biased technological change.”
Economists have also pointed out that this is what happens when “technology makes workers more productive, while it takes over the complex and difficult parts, making the workers who do them more replaceable.”
Half of the American workforce
According to the newspaper, “artificial intelligence is working to automate cognitive work,” and this will affect “half of the American workforce who work in these jobs,” as the demand for people with medium skills will decline in favor of different technological systems.
She also pointed out that “new technology has the ability to adjust the combination of winners and losers in the increasingly polarized US economy” around various axes.
Surviving the ‘economic slowdown’
While she added that the launch of various programming assistance tools was consistent with the layoff campaigns of technology companies for large numbers of employees, during the end of last year, while the “software engineer” jobs were the most losing in the labor market since the beginning of 2023 in the United States, according to “Revelio Labs” data. While the demand remains high for those with “very advanced experience” in software engineering.
She attributed what is happening in the software industry jobs market to the fact that emerging companies are looking to survive the “economic slowdown” and reduce their orientation to employment, while some companies employ those with advanced and exceptional expertise and maintain their presence while freezing any available opportunities for those with medium skills.
GPT Chat and Microsoft
It is reported that since late 2022, “Chat GBT” began to capture the boom of generative artificial intelligence, especially in the creation of texts, images, or even videos, and software workers found a way for them to use it and adapt it by helping them create and test programming “codes”, and they did not know that they were facing ” Boom” will go after their jobs too.
And in mid-2022, Microsoft launched a special programming tool, “Github CoPilot”, which allows programmers and even ordinary users to use it to build programming “codes” and help test them.
In addition, the data of the “Stack Overflow” company survey shows that about 70% of the 90,000 programmers who participated in the survey use artificial intelligence solutions in their work, while about a third of them indicated that these tools make them more productive.
Urge governments to intervene
Technology experts fear the risks and effects of artificial intelligence systems if they are not controlled. In late June, Jeffrey Hinton, described as the godfather of artificial intelligence, urged governments to step in to ensure that machines do not take over society.
Hinton made headlines in May when he announced he was stepping down from Google after a decade joining it to speak more freely about the dangers of artificial intelligence shortly after launching ChatGBT that captured the world’s imagination.
And the artificial intelligence scientist who teaches at the University of Toronto added, “Before artificial intelligence becomes smarter than us, I believe that the people who develop it should be encouraged to do a lot of effort to understand how it can try to rob us of control,” adding: “Now there are 99 people who enjoy One very smart person trying to make AI better, one very smart person trying to figure out how to stop it from taking over, and maybe you should be a little more level-headed.”