Artificial intelligence will put some people out of work but it will streamline production

How will artificial intelligence affect economic growth? What does the agreement reached by the European Union on the rules governing the use of this technology mean for businesses? This was discussed during EEC Trends by Professor Aleksandra Przegalińska from Koźmiński University.

At the end of 2023, the European Union reached an agreement on rules governing the use of artificial intelligence, including the use of AI by governments in biometric surveillance and how to regulate systems such as ChatGPT.

Business group DigitalEurope has criticised the legislation, seeing it as another burden on companies, alongside other recent legislation.

Professor Aleksandra Przegalińska from Koźmiński University in Warsaw, who was a guest at EEC Trends in Warsaw, admitted that from the point of view of technology companies this could be a “bitter compromise”, but pointed out that this technology already had to be put into a certain legal framework.

The technology will put workers who are at the beginning of their career path at risk
“ChatGPT can do things that were previously done by staff in junior positions. This raises a very important question: what are we going to do so that people who are just learning and who may be replaced by artificial intelligence actually have a chance to learn this profession?”, said Professor Aleksandra Przegalińska.

In previous technological revolutions, the aim was to significantly increase labour productivity and thus accelerate economic growth.

The growth was then mainly achieved through mechanisation. 

“We are already seeing that tools based on artificial intelligence offer the opportunity to work with them in several ways. Such a tool can work simultaneously with me, it can take over some of the responsibilities from me, but it can also be such a sparring partner, with whom we can cooperate, co-think”, explained Professor Przegalińska.

A quantum leap in the work being done that is supported by artificial intelligence
The expert argued that employers have a lot of work to do when it comes to taming the fear among employees about implementing AI-based solutions.  

“It will be useful and give a lot to the company if we have the staff trained to do it. I understand that this is a technology that raises a lot of concerns in terms of changes to the tasks performed by employees and whether they will still really be there for them. The truth is that there are very few professions that may disappear because of artificial intelligence”, reassured the EEC Trends speaker.

The data collected by Professor Przegalińska shows that there are segments of the labour market where the implementation of artificial intelligence has improved the situation by leaps and bounds. 

“The productivity gain among marketers and salespeople, for example, was 40 per cent. We did such a study, which concluded just like this. This is a major released resource. You have to have an idea to be able to use it”, she appealed.

Professor Aleksandra Przegalińska participated in the EEC Trends conference in Warsaw on 8 February 2024. The event is a prologue to the European Economic Congress to be held in Katowice on 7-9 May 2024.