If history is a guide, and I think it is, it'll act as an enhancement of most people's lives, it'll cause a number of major problems and it'll negatively affect a decent number of people's lives.
It's worth looking back to get an idea where it's going. The internet put a decent number of people out of work, especially in bricks & mortar shops, it has caused some major societal problems too, but overall there's no doubt there's a net benefit from it.
I moved to England 20 years ago to design mobile phones. There were 20 companies within 20 miles designing phones, the likes of Nokia, Motorola, Panasonic, Sony, NEC, Sharp, etc...
Used to go to factories in China where they'd pay a few dollars a day and literally have someone at the end of a production line with a brush cleaning it. The sort of job that could be done by a pretty cheap piece of machinery. Their knowledge of electronics was laughably bad and nobody understood software.
Left that industry 10 years ago because all of the design work had shifted to Asia, those very same companies in China were now designing good phones from the ground up. All of the manufacturing in Europe was gone, plants closed and the design work mostly went with them. There were 2 companies left doing phone design around Reading.
All those people found new jobs eventually, frequently with pain but the market adapted. The cost of phones dropped dramatically*, and the few remaining companies in the west really mostly worry about higher level function and design.
At the moment, AI is convincing sounding but not particularly clever. I think of it like Jacob Rees Mogg. It's really not a good idea to trust it much, even if it sounds like it knows exactly what it's doing.
AI right now is best thought of as really powerful autocorrect and a tool in certain processes. Network configuration? Sure. Driving from Skibereen to Bantry?
Hahaha. No.
Additionally it can't take responsibility for failure and doesn't really understand people. Probably never will understand people because, well, people don't understand people.
If you work writing dull press releases for boring tech companies, get your CV ready as you're out of a job. If you create websites, you had better start getting good at using AI.
It's good for complicated jobs but not complex jobs. It's worth understanding which your job is to get a feel for how much you're likely to be impacted:
Decision-makers commonly mistake complex systems for simply complicated ones and look for solutions without realizing that ‘learning to…
sonjablignaut.medium.com
*Relatively, the actual cost people pay for phones nowadays is higher but the capabilities are an order of magnitude better. €110 for a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G absolutely trounces an €599 iPhone 5S from 2013 in almost any metric.
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