Artificial intelligence is not going away. But we have a choice whether to embrace it or fear it. PHOTO: ambermb

The argument against artificial intelligence (AI) is driven by fear. Fear of the unknown fear of intelligence.

According to Stephen Hawkings we do have reason to beware of the consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) including the possibility of the end of the human race.

The rise of the machines wont be happening imminently. After all, AI is still in its infancy. The most realistic fear today is that AI will take peoples jobs.

Undoubtedly technology is taking peoples jobs in droves. Anytime you self-checkout in the grocery store you might be conveniencing yourself but youre also doing something that just 15 years ago someone would have been paid to do for you.

The trend is also happening in casual type restaurants such as Red Robin, where machines are on the table that do everything but bring you the food itself.

Airlines use self-serve kiosks to print luggage tags and boarding passes. Banks use intelligent automated voices to route calls and do practically everything unless you specifically ask for a representative.

It doesnt exactly take a forward thinker to envision a time when cars are self-driving. And with the technological advancement of drones, its not hard to imagine that commercial planes will one day be pilotless.

While Moores Law implies technology doubles every two years, the reality is humans are notoriously slow at adopting it.

Weve been trained to think of new technology as cost prohibitive and buggy. We let tech savvy pioneers test new things and we wait until the second or third iteration, when the technology is ready, before deciding to adopt it.

While AI seems like a futuristic concept, its actually something that many people use daily, although 63 percent of users dont realize theyre using it.

Google is a great example of machine learning that many people use every day and it truly does make life easier. Marketers use artificial intelligence for a variety of functions, not the least of which include personalization. The reason that Netflix or Amazon are able to give you personalized suggestions is because the technology that runs their software uses AI.

While the fear of job loss is understandable, there is another point to make: because of artificial intelligence many people are currently doing jobs that werent available even just a few years back.

Lets circle back to marketers for example. The technological know-how is now a full-time job, so alongside designers and copywriters is a new breed of marketer that is trained to purposefully promote content to a uniquely tailored audience.

Even so, when you Google which new jobs will AI produce, you only get a list of articles saying AI will eliminate jobs.

Of course, fear typically drives more clicks than positivity, so its not surprising that more articles focus on the negative aspects of AI than the good that many people proclaim will come from it.

Were currently in a situation where the new US Presidential administration that has made a mantra out of saving American jobs.

To date, the jobs the administration is focusing on are jobs that will be taken over by intelligent machines in the not-to-distant future.

Retaining jobs is important, but with a strategy around educating people on the coming technology, long-term retention of jobs would be a lot more realistic. Manufacturing is becoming less about screwing parts together and more about robotic maintenance and foresight.

No leader should want to stop this advancement, but a leader should recognize the future and see to a long-term solution rather than a short-term one.

The previous administration did study the impact of AI on our economy. The White House study, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy doesnt sugarcoat the fact that AI will take peoples jobs as many as 47 percent in the next decade. It also goes on to emphasize that these jobs will be replaced with others, and that a focus on education and investments in the industry are vital.

AI informed intelligence software will always learn from current scenarios. It is only as good as the programmers, according to Kitty Parr, founder and CEO of Social Media Compliance (SMC), in ComputerWeekly.com. If thats the case, certainly programmers have a bright future.

Even software companies not at the scale of Google or Amazon are already using AI and creating jobs at the same time. Take my company, censhare, a Munich-based digital experience company. We've been running a semantic network, a fancy term for AI, since 2001. Besides the jobs at censhare that AI produces, its customer base needs people who can run the software as well.

You can extract from the above paragraph that there are many companies on the forefront of this new technology and they all need developers, marketers, sales, support, leadership and everyone else involved in running a company.

Intelligent machines arent going to start running companies, people will continue making the glue that holds corporations together.

Artificial intelligence is not going away.

We have a choice whether to embrace it or fear it.

People who embrace it from the start will inevitably end up ahead, while those who choose to fear or even ignore it will be left playing catch-up. The latter is who will end up losing jobs while the former will continue doing what they love, just maybe in a slightly different way.

Douglas Eldridge has worked in marketing/communications since 2003. As marketing manager for censhare US, he is tasked with strategizing and implementing digital marketing efforts in the US, utilizing both inbound and outbound methods.

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Why the Benefits of Artificial Intelligence Outweigh the Risks - CMSWire