Amid widespread speculation that artificial intelligence (AI) will make most of today’s jobs redundant and even replace humanity itself, the UK’s Institute for the Future of Work has taken a more pragmatic approach.
Its study on the impact of modern technologies on almost 5,000 workers highlights employee concerns about the adverse effect AI is already having on their day-to-day work lives. While the majority of those surveyed believed that older technologies such as laptops and smartphones generally improve their quality of life, the same is not true of AI.
“Quality of life positively correlated with the frequency of interaction with ICT such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, and real-time messaging tools increased. Quality of life negatively correlated with the frequency of interaction with newer workplace technologies such as wearables, robotics, AI, and ML software, rose,” reports the study, which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
The study argues that, in the past, concepts of well-being have tended to be poorly conceptualized, resulting in largely meaningless and unspecific findings concerning ‘stress’ and ‘burnout’ without investigating the cause of that stress. Factors currently contributing to stress include a fear of privacy violations and increasing concern regarding the use of ‘deepfake’ technologies to hoodwink and defraud people.
“This pioneering study shows clearly how new technology can damage workers’ well-being—unless employers explicitly ensure it does not,” says Richard Layard, program director of the Centre for Economic Performance.
Over-zealous use of AI will result in increased IP litigation
According to Gartner, premature adoption of AI could also result in companies and individuals being sued for copyright infringement. The research organization predicts that by 2026, defensive spending to derisk loss of intellectual property (IP) and occurrence of copyright infringement will slow generative AI (GenAI) adoption and diminish returns.
“As GenAI advances, regulators are rushing to keep pace. IP risk is not a new issue. However, copyright infringement risk, previously a limited risk, now affects potentially everyone in the organization. Copyright infringement risk must be incorporated into the vendor selection and governance process, while workers must be trained on assessment tools,” says Gartner analyst Rita Sallam.
