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This is a post in response to @atamme's question, “The concept of Universal Basic Income exists because of the possibility of humans losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. What are some other ways to combat the loss of jobs due to AI?”
This topic is discussed frequently in my industry of study, hospitality and tourism management. It is easy to see that over the years, several jobs are being replaced and automated, so as to improve the quality of life of working individuals. IN factories and production, jobs have been automated for decades, and robotics are beginning to leak into the hospitality industry too. One can easily see this with contactless check-in via kiosks at hotels and airports or self-checkout at restaurants like Chili’s and Applebees. And to an extent, these automated services are very beneficial to the speed and efficiency of service. However, the tourism and hospitality industry is based upon service and customer interactions. Robots should one-hundred percent replace the repetitive, monotonous behind-the-scenes tasks so that humans can do what they do best: emotions. Something that artificial intelligence will never be able to effectively recreate is human emotions and empathy.
As robotics and AI continue to grow, we can create more jobs in the field of customer service and human interaction experiences. Workers will be required to focus their attention on higher valued and more deep thinking tasks. Additionally, there will be more jobs to work on and maintain machines. I do not think that the advent of artificial intelligence in the workplace should be a big worry for us, it is part of the development of society. Before the use of refrigeration, people had to shop (or hunt) for food much more frequently, but now that we can preserve our food longer we spend less time at the store and more time doing enriching activities. The same idea goes for internet filing systems, no longer do we have to spend time looking through filing cabinet after filing cabinet, we can now find exactly what we are looking for with the click of a keyboard. Maybe artificial intelligence will remove some jobs and create more job sharing and flex time, giving us more time for enjoying our lives. I don’t think that is such a bad thing. If people have more time to explore and vacation, that means they will have more time to put money back into the economy.