Google CEO Says People Will Need to Adapt to AI Stealing Jobs
Sundar Pichai predicts AI will cause "societal disruption," but of course, he himself won't do anything about it.
If you remember last year's interview with Mira Murati, OpenAI's former CTO, you should also remember that when it comes to artificial intelligence stealing people's jobs, big-league AI developers have long moved past the denial stage and into full acceptance – as in, they've stopped denying that it is happening and are now telling you to accept it.
Showing this mindset on full display is Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, who said in a recent interview that people should simply learn how to adapt to "the most profound technology humanity has ever worked on," instead of trying to actually change anything.
Speaking to the BBC, Pichai predicted AI causing "societal disruption" – without going in-depth on what he means by that – though he himself, being the head of one of the most prominent AI developers, naturally doesn't plan to do anything about it. Instead of addressing the disruption, he insisted that "people will need to adapt" to AI, arguing that "those who learn to adopt and adapt to AI will do better" going forward.
"It doesn't matter whether you want to be a teacher, a doctor – all those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools," Pichai said, drawing criticism from some commenters who argued he fails to grasp that if AI fully replaces a job, human input becomes unnecessary, and the only thing AI can do to change that is cease to exist.
Credit where credit is due, the CEO did acknowledge what many of you have probably thought, agreeing that "what CEOs do is probably one of the easier things for AI to do one day." Whether he said this to avoid getting accused of being a hypocrite or simply because he's already set for several lifetimes, that is for you to judge, but he clearly seems fine with the idea of machines taking his place one day.
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