Will AI Take Your Job? Maybe Not Just Yet, One Study Says

Will artificial intelligence take our jobs? If you listen to Silicon Valley executives talking about the capabilities of today's cutting edge AI systems, you might think the answer is "yes, and soon." But a new paper published by MIT researchers suggests automation in the workforce might happen slower than you think. The researchers at MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory studied not only whether AI was able to perform a task, but also whether it made economic sense for firms to replace humans performing those tasks in the wider context of the labor market. They found that while computer vision AI is today capable of automating tasks that account for 1.6% of worker wages in the U.S. economy (excluding agriculture), only 23% of those wages (0.4% of the economy as a whole) would, at today's costs, be cheaper for firms to automate instead of paying human workers.