The cost of replacing most human employment with artificial intelligence remains high

According to an MIT study, employment loss due to AI will be less than current market job churn.

According to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, artificial intelligence (AI) remains too expensive to replace the majority of human employment.

According to the Beyond AI Exposure study, “Machines will steal our jobs” is a common sentiment stated during periods of fast technological progress. “Such anxiety has re-emerged with the creation of large language models (e.g. ChatGPT, Bard, GPT-4) that show considerable skill in tasks where previously only human beings showed proficiency,” the report said on Monday.

Because of the high initial expenses of AI systems, it was determined that just 23% of worker remuneration “exposed” to AI computer vision would be cost-effective for corporations to automate.

“In contrast, 77% of vision jobs are not cost-effective to automate if a system can only be used at the business level. This discrepancy demonstrates that the cost-effectiveness of AI models will most likely play a key role in the technology’s widespread adoption,” it concluded.

According to the study, even if an AI computer system costs $1,000, there are some functions that are not economically viable to replace, such as low-wage occupations and work in small businesses.

It also suggested that AI may be made more appealing by lowering the cost of installations or raising the scale at which deployments are conducted.

“Overall, our model shows that the job loss from AI computer vision, even just within the set of vision tasks, will be smaller than the existing job churn seen in the market, suggesting that labor replacement will be more gradual than abrupt,” according to the paper.