\n
![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/GettyImages-1349375133-e1713195150818.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n [ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
The day that artificial intelligence takes your job may be further off than most people think.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Fortune\u00a0Brainstorm AI<\/a>\u00a0conference on Monday, Marc Warner, the chief executive of AI consultancy Faculty dismissed fears that adopting the technology at scale would automatically lead to a mass culling of employees.<\/p>\n \u201cThat will be much further away than those people anticipate,\u201d Warner told conference participants in London, adding it was often all too easy amid the ongoing hype to overestimate AI\u2019s true capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLook at when we were promised fully autonomous cars\u2014it\u2019s taken a bit longer than we expected,\u201d Warner continued.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Ever since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, experts have predicted generative AI, and AI more broadly, would eventually revolutionize every facet of our daily lives just like the internet did a generation ago. Economists at Goldman Sachs<\/a> even\u00a0predicted last April<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0no less than 300 million full time-equivalent jobs were at risk of redundancy as a result.<\/p>\n Warner believes such predictions will prove as unrealistic as robotaxis.\u00a0<\/p>\n Executives in both the tech and the auto industry have repeatedly argued this technology was just around the corner. For example, Elon Musk falsely forecast\u00a0five years ago<\/a>\u00a0to the month that Tesla<\/a> would have 1 million cars on the road by 2020\u2014each earning the equivalent of $30,000 in annual fares for their lucky owners.\u00a0Instead, it has taken considerably longer to ensure the technology\u2019s safe deployment. Just a few weeks before ChatGPT arrived, Bloomberg already concluded<\/a> \u201cself-driving cars are going nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNowhere\u201d is perhaps too skeptical, but progress has indeed been painfully slow. The few AI-driven cars in operation are largely confined to a handful of select cities that boast the most favorable overall road conditions, such as San Francisco and Phoenix, and even then they have not been without the occasional\u00a0scandal<\/a>. <\/p>\n The idea that AI would swiftly automate people\u2019s jobs out of existence in the process would likewise prove premature, Warner believes.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly, it\u2019s both true and good that it would be further away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A former Harvard University fellow in physics, Warner\u00a0co-founded<\/a>\u00a0Faculty in 2014 to help organizations using AI better reap the technology\u2019s benefits while managing its potential risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n He believes AI should first and foremost be developed and built around humans to serve as a tool that supports them\u00a0rather than supplants them<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Not only could that approach ultimately be more effective, when compared with scaring people with predictions of layoffs in the hundreds of millions, it could go a long way in gaining social acceptance for AI as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nAI should be designed to support people, not supplant them<\/h2>\n
Subscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n