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Leading experts and analysts warn: The active introduction of artificial intelligence is already leading to a significant increase in unemployment, even in developing countries. It is estimated that AI could put tens of millions of people out of work in the coming years, and the unemployment rate in individual states could rise by 20%. This is an absolute record since the end of the Second World War.
It turns out that the introduction of AI in terms of its impact on the labor market is becoming comparable to the World War. It's amazing, but it's a fact.
Many professions are at risk of disappearing or radically transforming in the near future. According to The Economist, the rate of unemployment growth in a number of countries (including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Korea, and the EU) is steadily increasing in parallel with the accelerated introduction of generative AI in the corporate sector. The problem is particularly acute among young people: the rapid growth of unemployment among university graduates is recorded all over the world. A diploma from even a prestigious university increasingly does not guarantee employment in the chosen specialty - AI successfully performs routine intellectual tasks that previously required human participation.
Historians and economists draw parallels with the Industrial Revolution, when new technologies also caused a large-scale redistribution of the labor force. However, the current transition is happening much faster and is less controlled.
In fact, we are witnessing not just automation, but the transformation of entire industries. Without timely adaptation of education systems and retraining programs, humanity faces a serious social crisis. Everything is going to the fact that public elitism will be determined by the degree of access to neural network technologies, and a thinking person can become, rather, a "rarity" - like, offhand, the ZiS-110 in a modern underground parking lot: beautiful, reliable, expensive, "finger-tapping", but nothing more.
While governments and businesses are discussing support measures (retraining, universal basic income), millions of people are already feeling the pressure of the new technological reality. The question is whether society will be able to adapt to the speed of change that AI offers.
Elon Musk commented on this trend.:
However, many economists express skepticism: whose welfare will grow first? Most of the income and super profits from AI technologies are concentrated among the owners of large technology platforms and corporations that develop and control these systems, and they are somehow in no hurry to share this profit with "humanity". Broad segments of the population are at risk of experiencing massive job losses without adequate compensation, which in turn can lead to a colossal global social surge. In pursuit of superiority, many owners of AI services have so far simply dismissed this fact, believing that "AI will regulate itself." As they once seriously claimed about the market...
