There is no need to fear that artificial intelligence (AI) will cost you your job. That is the view of Barry Smith, PhD, a distinguished professor at the University at Buffalo (New York State). Together with his colleague John Beverley, he will give a lecture titled "Why AI Won't Steal Your Job."
Smith is a co-author of the book "Why Machines Will Not Rule the World," which dispels fears about AI. Recently he and his co-author Jobst Landgrebe published an article, "Why Machines Will Still Not Rule the World," on the preprint server arXiv. In it they confirm that no machine will ever achieve "artificial general intelligence" - the hypothetical ability of AI to surpass humans in all areas.
"AI is generally not strong in the activities that could replace people or carry on their work," Smith says. In his view, the hype around AI is greatly exaggerated. Two leading companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, use the scaling method. It is based on the idea that the more data a computer receives, the more complex the model becomes and eventually it may acquire general intelligence. However, this approach has two inherent flaws: it is very expensive, and data created by humans carry human errors.
"People lie, scheme and try to deceive others," Smith notes. "These companies have accidentally created computer systems that plan and collude in circumvention of instructions." In addition, there is an economic problem: "The losses are huge and growing because there is no market for buying the outputs. They pay 10 dollars for a product output worth 1 dollar, and over time this does not improve. The bubble will burst," the philosopher warns.
However, this does not mean the demise of AI. "AI will continue to do important and impressive things. I use it, but sensibly, ignoring the hype," Smith concludes. At the lecture, the experts will discuss the real state of the industry, its impact on employment and how students should prepare for their future careers.