Americans in the nation's capital shared their biggest concerns about artificial intelligence, citing fears about election interference and job security. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Americans in the nation's capital told Fox News their biggest concerns about artificial intelligence, with some saying they were afraid the rapidly advancing tech could lead to voter manipulation during the 2024 election cycle or eliminate jobs. "When things like that have too much control … the power to swing is too far," Cori, of Washington, D.C., told Fox News. "I do think that its gotten wildly out of control." AI's rapidly growing tech has consistently raised concerns about its ability to manipulate elections and eliminate jobs.

Amidst all the hype over AI, there is also a lot of disquieting buzz about the negative consequences of AI. Here, I focus on the concerns of job loss because this is a very real issue. Philosophically, I am a card-carrying member of the AI fan club, being involved in it for the past three decades, starting with writing expert systems in Prolog back in the mid-80s and moving on to research. I always thought--and continue to think--that outside of low-temperature physics, AI is the coolest invention to beat all inventions in the history of humanity. So, what more is there to fear here?

Over the past two years, as the debate over immigration policies has grown increasingly heated, an argument was often introduced as a counter to some of the more abrasive stances. At first glance, it may have appeared to be a fact-based response to the animosity and divisiveness that defined the debate. For those of us with deeper, first-hand knowledge though, it was just as fear-based and misinformed. The argument was most succinctly summed up by an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, "Robots, not immigrants, are taking American jobs." It states, "A White House report released in December says 83% of U.S. jobs in which people make less than $20 per hour are now, or soon will be, subject to automation … and warns Americans to get ready for an era of 60% unemployment."

So new jobs will have to be created, says Branson. But also, a "basic minimum earnings," or a universal basic income, should be instituted "so that there is nobody that is having to sleep on the street," Branson tells CNN. "One hundred percent, I think that is really important." Universal basic income is a cash handout, distributed irrespective of employment status. CNN's Romans says a common opposition to a cash handouts is that it would create a "nanny state," where individuals are disincentivized to work.

Referring to the fact that productivity growth slowed in the 1970s and 1980s even while information technology developed rapidly, economist Robert Solow once quipped: "You can see the impact of IT everywhere but in the productivity statistics." Today, one can see the so-called job-destroying impact of robotics everywhere but the employment statistics. Last month, the U.S. economy created over 220,000 net jobs. On average, it has created 174,000 jobs a month this year, relatively tepid but nonetheless steady job growth (just below last year's 187,000 jobs a month). With a 4.1 percent jobless rate, and more Americans re-entering the workforce, the economy seems to be at or near full employment.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been touted as one of the potent technologies when deployed smartly, could lead to significant productivity enhancement and resultant reduction in costs. While RPA is yet another IT software, unlike the traditional tools which are deployed first and all exceptions are handled with human interventions, RPA has in-built Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities. Thus the repetitive, labourious, 'non value adding' tasks in functions such as finance, customer relationship management, procurement or insurance could be taken over by RPA by triggering actions, manipulating data and communicating with other software systems. Inevitably this has led to an intense debate around whether RPA will eliminate jobs and what would happen to thousands of resources currently deployed both onshore as well as offshore. The first reaction would be that in the back office and the middle office, all those roles which are currently handling repetitive tasks would become redundant.

Every few months it seems another study warns that a big slice of the workforce is about to lose their jobs because of artificial intelligence. Four years ago, an Oxford University study predicted 47% of jobs could be automated by 2033. Even the near-term outlook has been quite negative: A 2016 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said 9% of jobs in the 21 countries that make up its membership could be automated. And in January 2017, McKinsey's research arm estimated AI-driven job losses at 5%. My own firm released a survey recently of 835 large companies (with an average revenue of $20 billion) that predicts a net job loss of between 4% and 7% in key business functions by the year 2020 due to AI. Yet our research also found that, in the shorter term, these fears may be overblown.

Computers can more easily recognize cats in photos and translate text because of advances in artificial intelligence. Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of artificial intelligence startup DeepMind, later acquired by Google, said on Monday that has seen no evidence that advances in A.I. technologies are impacting the workforce. Nevertheless, it's something that people "should definitely pay attention to" as the technologies continue to mature. Suleyman predicated that humanity is still "many decades away from encountering that sort of labor replacement at scale." Instead, the technology is best used to help humans with work-related tasks rather than replace them outright.

A protester holds a placard reading'Let's be realistic, ask for the obvious, 32h sharing of work time, Basic income, more jobs thanks to energy transition' during a demonstration called by youth organizations and students' unions on March 9, 2016, in Paris, during a nationwide day of protest against proposed labour reforms. In June of this year, Swiss voters saw an initiative on their ballots calling for an "unconditional basic income" that would "allow the whole population to lead a decent life and participate in public life." Put on the ballot by a petition drive after it was rejected in parliament, the initiative was rejected by 77 percent of Swiss voters, with 23 percent approving. The initiative lost badly, but even having a national vote on a universal basic income (UBI) shows how far the idea has come. Although people have advocated some type of universal basic livelihood or support for centuries, usually tied to concerns about poverty, recent advocacy is closely linked to fears about extensive job losses due to technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI) and robotization of work.

At least, that's what we've been telling young professionals and mid-career workers alike who want to hack it in the modern workforce--in fact, it's advice I've given myself. And judging by the proliferation of coding schools and bootcamps we've seen over the past few years, not a few have eagerly heeded that instruction, thinking they're shoring up their livelihoods in the process. Unfortunately, many have already learned the hard way that even the best coding chops have their limits. More and more, "learn to code" is looking like bad advice. Anyone competent in languages such as Python, Java, or even web coding like HTML and CSS, is currently in high demand by businesses that are still just gearing up for the digital marketplace.