Advertisement
.jpg?itok=6kf9ZEKx&v=1696403582)
Opinion | How to keep generative AI from fully replacing humans – soft skills and entrepreneurship
- AI’s growing potential to replace millions of jobs worldwide means humans must find ways for sustainable coexistence with intelligent machines
- Focusing on what humans excel at but AI cannot do, including entrepreneurship and soft skills, can help keep workers from being replaced
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
1
When a toymaker warns the world of the dangers of the new toy, the world should pay attention. Such is the case with Geoffrey Hinton, the creator of generative artificial intelligence, on AI’s existential threat to humanity and its potential to trigger massive global unemployment.
Advertisement
A recent report by employment agency Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows there were more than 20,000 lay-offs in the US tech industry in May alone. Goldman Sachs economists estimate that 300 million full-time jobs worldwide could be affected by AI automation.
The genie is already out of the bottle. The question is not whether our future will be defined by human and machine adversaries but how to find ways for sustainable coexistence with intelligent machines.
In this emerging landscape, it makes sense for humans to focus on what they are good at – from soft skills such as empathy, persuasion and creative and analytical thinking to physical work including farming, building and providing high-touch services – but the most recent GPT-4 is so powerful it can do some of these things.
What is left for humans? How should humans respond to generative AI?
Advertisement
One thing that is difficult for AI to do – and something at which humans excel – is entrepreneurialism. This includes the ability to plan, muddle through and mobilise people and resources to create new ventures to achieve certain goals. AI cannot do these things, at least for the foreseeable future.
Advertisement