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Warning that AI could lead to job losses locally

by Barbados Today
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Students from the Parkinson Memorial School and St Leonard's Boys' School listening attentively to the wide-ranging discussion on AI uses.

Director of the Centre for Hybrid Studies Dr Deryck Murray believes there needs to be a national conversation about the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on the Barbadian workforce.
He issued the caution while addressing the Sky AI seminar at Sky Mall, where experts from several fields connected to artificial intelligence spoke with students from the secondary and tertiary levels about the benefits and challenges of the rapidly growing technology.
Speaking to Barbados TODAY, Dr Murray said that given increased growth in AI projects globally, there will be significant levels of layoffs within the workforce if the country does not prepare itself.
“AI is cross-cutting in terms of its opportunities and the dangers, and the problem [is] that we have had disruptive technologies in the past but they disrupted in such a way that we had some time to adjust, and if it happened rapidly it only happened with one sector of society.
“The difference with AI is that the disruption is across the board, and it is happening rapidly. So it presents a serious challenge in terms of how we respond. We don’t have the usual luxury of the rest of society being stable and we respond to one sector,” he said.
Murray, who is also a lecturer in Science, History and Culture at the University of the West Indies, added: “For example, you can sit down at your computer and generate the art that you want. If you can come up with a creative prompt, you don’t need to contract a graphics artist. So what will we do with the graphics art programme at the BCC [Barbados Community College]?
“People would say ‘well, a true artist or true computer scientist, you would still need those people with the eye to be able to tell the quality’, but then it becomes a sort of profession that only requires a few excellent individuals rather than something that could employ a large part of the population.”
Dr Murrary noted that given the global use of ChatGPT and other popular AI platforms in areas of education, arts, and other sectors, there were questions about the viability of current jobs.
“For example, with ChatGPT doing coding now, does it make sense spending a lot of time and effort on resources and money [that]? Perhaps the emphasis should be on algorithms or some other part of computer science. Those are some of the questions that we want to be able to look at,” he said.
“Next week, here, we will look at how it will impact the professions – lawyers, accountants, journalists, and so on. AI will rapidly replace many of the traditional jobs.”
At the conclusion of the discussions, a formal report is expected to be produced on the possible way forward for Barbados in AI.
(SB)

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