In her presentation at the Web Summit Rio 2023, Cassie Kozyrkov, who holds the title of Chief Decision Scientist at Google, sheds light on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has influenced job automation.
She takes us back in time to demonstrate that historically, engineers have been at the forefront of job automation, and now, AI is essentially carrying out the same role but for software engineers.
She discusses the paradigm shift in the world of programming where the traditional, meticulously written code by software engineers is being replaced by AI and Machine Learning algorithms that learn from examples and data.
This signifies a change in the way we converse with machines.
Kozyrkov also provides an overview of the evolution of AI over the past few decades.
It all began with researchers working on theoretical capabilities.
The baton was then passed on to builders who created large-scale applications.
Today, it’s the users who are interacting with AI directly to solve their individual problems.
Interestingly, she suggests that the ongoing revolution in AI is not really about AI at all, but rather a design revolution.
The shift represents a move from seamless experiences to urging users to engage directly with AI, utilizing it to come up with creative solutions to their own problems.
To illustrate her points, she details her own experience of using AI tools in preparing her presentation, such as converting speech to text, identifying main points for discussion, generating visual content, and writing code.
Finally, she stresses the importance of using AI responsibly.
With AI augmenting our capabilities, she warns of the potential to unintentionally cause harm to others and advocates for a communal, responsible approach to addressing the world’s issues.
