The rise of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT has raised fears of a technological takeover around the world. However, the CEO of tech giant IBM, Arvind Krishna, thinks it’s a good thing because it would take over “white-collar clerical work”.
In an interview with Britain’s Financial Times newspaper, Krishna explained: “Fields such as customer service, human resources, and positions within finance and healthcare could be automated – not in years, but today.”
He then went on to explain that healthcare and finance are “regulatory jobs” that people wouldn’t do. “Much of it could be automated using these techniques,” he told the FT.
The IBM boss also said that going forward, artificial intelligence will likely be able to manage “things like drug discovery or trying to perfect chemistry.”
“I think [the practical use of AI] is here and now,” he said, adding: “In the real world, we have a labor shortage because of the demographic problem that the world is facing… The United States now has 3.4% unemployment, the lowest in 60 years. So maybe we’ll find tools to replace some parts of the work, and this time it’s good.”
Krishna also said that AI taking over customer service could also give clients “a much better response at maybe about half the current cost. Over time, it may still get below half, but it can take half quite quickly.”
“There are hundreds of such processes in every business, so I think the administrative work will be able to be replaced by this,” he added.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT’s success is keeping the tech giants on their toes. Microsoft is trying to challenge Google’s dominance in the search engine space by investing in its Bing search engine and incorporating AI technologies into search. Microsoft is also a key investor in OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, a conversational model based on artificial intelligence.
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