What International AI Safety report says on jobs, climate, cyberwar and more
What International AI Safety report says on jobs, climate, cyberwar and more
Share:
Wide-ranging investigation says impact on work likely to be profound, but opinion on risk of human extinction varies. The International AI Safety report is a wide-ranging document that acknowledges an array of challenges posed by a technology that is advancing at dizzying speed.
The document, commissioned after the 2023 global AI safety summit, covers numerous threats from deepfakes to aiding cyberattacks and the use of biological weapons, as well as the impact on jobs and the environment. Here are some of the key points from the report chaired by Yoshua Bengio, a world-leading computer scientist.
In a section on “labour market risks”, the report warns that the impact on jobs will “likely be profound”, particularly if AI agents – tools that can carry out tasks without human intervention – become highly capable. “General-purpose AI, especially if it continues to advance rapidly, has the potential to automate a very wide range of tasks, which could have a significant effect on the labour market. This means that many people could lose their current jobs,” says the report.
The report adds that many economists believe job losses could be offset by the creation of new jobs or demand from sectors not touched by automation. According to the International Monetary Fund, about 60% of jobs in advanced economies such as the US and UK are exposed to AI and half of these jobs may be negatively affected. The Tony Blair Institute has said AI could displace up to 3m private-sector jobs in the UK, though the ultimate rise in unemployment will be in the low hundreds of thousands because growth in the technology will create new roles in an AI-transformed economy.
