Writing on the wall for creatives

WARNINGS of job losses due to automation and artificial intelligence have been relatively easy to ignore over time, given the lack of specifics around how this upheaval would unfold.

More recently, of course, our focus has been on dealing with the health and social aspects of COVID-19.

However, it’s just two years until the start of the decade (2025-2035) during which a 2015 report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia says up to 40 per cent of Australian jobs will replaced by automation.

All of a sudden it feels like the future is here.

Mainstream

The tipping point has been all manner of commercial AI applications suddenly having become available. Those getting the most attention are focused on content generation, with a clear impact on businesses and individual professionals who provide writing, editing, design and other creative services.

You’ve probably seen AI-generated avatars of your friends on Facebook or read a post you thought was written by one of your Linkedin connections, but was actually written using ChatGPT, an AI that specialises in natural language generation.

Even the images of a future Perth for last issue’s Innovation & Technology column were created by AI image generator Midjourney.

To meet growing business interest in AI in Western Australia, West Tech Fest, the state’s largest innovation and technology festival, added an entire day dedicated to AI, data science, and robotics with the first Cybotics AI Day held in December.

Importantly, the event was held as details of how nearly half of the nation’s workforce will become obsolete in the next 10 years are coming into sharper focus.

Robots and my job

For the past decade, the website Will Robots Take My Job has been providing research-based predictions about the automation risk of 702 occupations across a variety of industries.

Initially based on research out of the University of Oxford, the creators of the website have been updating their predictions in line with technological changes. Notably, in 2017, occupations that required the seemingly very human skill of creativity, such as writers and authors, were given a very low automation risk (specifically 3.8 per cent).

At the time of writing for this article, the risk has moved to 49 per cent.

Solutions

One of the panels at the Cybotics AI Day consisted of a debate between some of Perth’s top AI experts on how we should move forward with AI to ensure it best services humanity. Specifically, should we regulate its development or just leave it up to industry?

Eighty-one per cent of the audience polled at the end of the debate voted for government regulation.

Another option in line with this thinking is introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which I’ve written about previously in this column. Such a scheme would address widescale closure of businesses and loss of jobs resulting from AI by guaranteeing a basic income to everyone, regardless of employment status or any other factor.

UBI can give people the freedom to pursue education and training or start new AI-proof businesses. Initial trials of the scheme in Finland and the US, for example, have shown a positive outcome in terms of improving people’s wellbeing, education and innovativeness.

What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg, with AI having far-reaching consequences for business we can barely begin to fathom.

But, wearing the hat of a Business News columnist, what I know for sure is that I’m a bit worried about my job.

• Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie is a multi-award-winning keynote speaker, certified LEGO Serious Play facilitator, and the creator of SUPERCONNECT, a play-based methodology for unleashing creativity, curiosity and human connection