Risk 1: Worsening unemployment<\/strong><\/p>\n“The concern that new technologies \u2013 especially artificial intelligence \u2013 will lead to widespread\u00a0job losses\u00a0has been widely discussed,” said\u00a0Hamann.<\/p>\n
“Of course, the fear that new technologies replace workers is an old one. But it\u2019s been pointed out that historically new technologies have often given rise to more new\u00a0jobs\u00a0than the ones that have been automated away.”<\/p>\n
“What\u2019s perhaps different now is that the new, interconnected digital technologies will likely have a broader and more far-reaching array of abilities. And so the prospect of new kinds of jobs may well be diminished or limited to increasingly sophisticated domains, such as machine learning.”<\/p>\n
Hamann also warned that\u00a0new technologies are now not just replacing jobs, but are also enabling the\u00a0disruption and restructuring\u00a0of entire industries – similar to how Uber transformed the taxi industry.<\/p>\n
The dearth of effective education systems and skills in countries like\u00a0South Africa\u00a0will make it more difficult for people to be retrained for the technology intensive new jobs that will become available, he said.<\/p>\n
“Secondly, all governments are struggling to grapple with the implications of new technologies and associated\u00a0new business models. This struggle is particularly strong in developing country governments. The case of Uber in South Africa reflects this.”<\/p>\n
Risk 2: Increasing concentration of wealth<\/strong><\/p>\nBecause wealthy individuals\u00a0will be more likely to make use of AI and other new technologies.\u00a0This will further increase returns to capital\u00a0widening the gap\u00a0between elites\u2019 productive capacity and that of everyone else, said\u00a0Hamann.<\/p>\n
“New technologies\u2019 advantages for capital are not just due to increasing productivity, but also because they allow new business models that may control or even dominate entire sub-sectors and stifle competition,” he said.<\/p>\n
“For instance, it could become possible for a single company to\u00a0control\u00a0large fleets of automated vehicles in one or more large areas.”<\/p>\n
He warned that\u00a0\u00a0much will depend on whether states can keep up with these developments and respond effectively and that particular attention needed to be paid to intellectual property and competition law.<\/p>\n
“Even so, many developing country governments are not giving these developments their due attention,” he said.<\/p>\n
Risk 3: Bias baked into algorithms<\/strong><\/p>\nOne of the biggest risks already being seen in modern-day AI is that\u00a0AI algorithms reflect and perpetuate the contexts and\u00a0biases\u00a0of those that create them. This has been seen by the difficulties faced by voice recognition software in recognising particular accents, said Hamann.<\/p>\n
“Of course, the promise is that AI will enable such systems to learn to address such issues. But the learning process itself might be influenced by racial, gender, or other\u00a0prejudices.<\/p>\n
“AI algorithms are developed almost entirely in developed regions. Thus they may not sufficiently reflect the contexts and priorities of developing countries. Ensuring that AI algorithms are appropriately trained and adapted in different contexts is part of the required response.<\/p>\n
“It would be even better if developing countries become more engaged in the development of new technological systems from the get-go,” he said.<\/p>\n
\nRead:\u00a0Why SA businesses need to have rules for smartphones and wearables<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While it has long been understood that AI could replace jobs around the world, experts believe that things could be much worse in developing nations like South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":79447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[12703,26],"class_list":["post-217807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-hamann","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217807"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218169,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217807\/revisions\/218169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}