An Oxford professor and expert in artificial intelligence (AI) has assured manual workers their jobs are not at risk, as the “technology is nowhere near ready to replace them”.
Professor Michael Wooldridge, who teaches computer science at Oxford University and is the director of the foundational AI research at the Alan Turing Institute, has told the Oxford Mail jobs such as working in supermarkets and which require “manual dexterity” remain safe from AI in the short term.
Oxford University is home to “unrivalled” AI research and Prof Wooldridge said the university was unique in having experts working in all areas from the philosophical foundations of AI to the building and programming of robots.
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Prof Wooldridge said manual workers should not yet fret about their jobs being replaced by AI.
He said: “I wouldn’t be losing sleep if you are in manual jobs.
“Weirdly, for a lot of jobs which require manual dexterity, such as working as a plumber or carpenter, the technology is nowhere near ready to replace them.”
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However, Prof Wooldridge said those working in call centres should be concerned as these jobs are “easily automatable”.
He said: “One class of jobs I would be worried about in the next decade would be call centre operators.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who are employed in call centres.
“If your job is to understand what people are telling you but you are more or less following a script that you’ve been given, then that kind of job is quite vulnerable.”
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Prof Wooldridge suggested the “importance of people” in carrying out a lot of jobs had been underestimated.
He said: “There is an awful lot of jobs which really require human understanding and having a human there is really quite important.
“I’m not as pessimistic about AI and jobs as some of the press has indicated.”
Prof Wooldridge said an area where AI could help our public institutions includes using it for the NHS.
He said: “In Oxford, we have lots of people analysing foetal scans and using AI to spot abnormalities on foetal ultra-sound scans.
“It is one example of the huge range of technologies which are going to make people’s lives better.”
However, Prof Wooldridge did not hold back from warning that the new technology would be a “disruptive force”.
At Oxford University, Prof Wooldridge said roughly hundreds of people were working on AI research and he said there was nowhere quite like the university in the UK in terms of how extensive the research taking place was.
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