October 16, 2024

Dylan Nguyen 

11th Grade

Fountain Valley High School

Imagine a world where surgeries are performed with flawless precision, legal documents are written in seconds, and customer service is provided 24/7, fueled by chatbots that never tire. This isn't something out of The Terminator, it's the reality we're moving toward as robots and AI integrate more into our daily lives. Is this revolution a threat to our existence, or is it an opportunity for evolution?

Take a look at how AI has been incorporated into the legal world. Just a couple of years ago, an AI was developed named CoCounsel, the “world's first AI legal assistant”. CoCounsel is a chat-based generative AI designed to help lawyers write their depositions and even help revise contracts.

Even in the medical field, technology has been impacting how we work. From supporting surgeries to outright operating, implementing robots has impacted the medical world immensely. For almost 40 years now, surgical robots have been operating on humans. Since these robots have a higher dexterity, these robots can make smaller cuts and get into places our hands might not be able to reach without a large incision. This gives the patient faster surgery, less scarring, and more importantly, a quicker recovery.

The main question is if robots will take our jobs. Most likely, the answer is yes. According to a McKinsey report, up to 14% of workers, or 375 million jobs will be affected by 2030 due to the implementation of automation and AI. However, automation won't only erase jobs, but create new ones as well.

Historically, technological advancements like the Industrial Revolution caused job displacement but it also created entirely new industries, leading to higher overall employment rates in the long term. While automation will cause some jobs to be irrelevant, there’s potential for new jobs to be created in fields that require human-specific skills. 

What are human skills exactly? AI cannot feel sympathy, it has no moral compass, and it simply just cannot express the same creativity we humans do. CoCounsel for example. It can help draft legal documents, but it cannot argue a case with the persuasiveness of a lawyer. AI can’t demonstrate the same intuition that plays a crucial role in courtrooms. Similarly, in fields like teaching, therapy, and healthcare, where understanding emotions and outside-the-box thinking, is crucial, a human simply cannot just be replaced. It can be trained with complex algorithms that mimic the concept of empathy but AI can never express real emotions.

As technology improves, we must also improve with it. If we stay so attached to our old ways, it will only be a matter of time before AI and automation take most of our jobs. The plus side to this is that we have something that AI can never have, and by focusing on these human-specific traits, like empathy and creative thinking, we can ensure that our places won’t be taken. Instead of seeing automation/AI as a threat, they can be our partners, our personal assistants. The collaboration between technology and people is what we need so that together we can shape a future where machines can help us reach new heights.