E-Skills

Collaboration

Jordy Van de Velde, Emma Onderbeke,

Xander Declerq, Brecht Polley, Valeria
Aksenova

Artevelde University College

E-Skills
Table of Contents
Introduction ...............................................................................................................................2
Does AI actually lead to the destruction of jobs, or the creation of it? ....................................2
Won’t AI widen the gap between countries even more?..........................................................3
How is AI going to change our lives? .........................................................................................5
Self-driving cars ......................................................................................................................5
Crime prevention ...................................................................................................................5
Healthcare ..............................................................................................................................5
China, the world’s biggest camera surveillance network ......................................................5
References .................................................................................................................................6
Introduction
In this report we are going to talk about AI or Artificial Intelligence and we are going to do
that by answering 3 questions.

First of all, what is AI exactly? AI is intelligence that is being demonstrated by machines

such as computers, phones,.. therefore it is also sometimes called machine intelligence. AI
is still to this day not completely perfected solely because of the fact that a machine can’t
think, feel or understand things like humans are capable of. The technology of AI still needs
a lot of perfecting but someday in the future, be sure that AI is going to be everywhere
(Wikipedia, sd).

That said, in this report we are going to research three questions about AI. The first question
is “Does AI actually lead to the destruction of jobs, or the creation of it?”. The second
question is “Won’t AI widen the gap between countries even more?”. the third and last
question is “How is AI going to change our lives?”.

Does AI actually lead to the destruction of jobs, or the creation of it?

One of the main concerns people express about Artificial Intelligence in Business life, is the
fact that AI probably will lead to the destruction of many jobs. But is this actually true
though? AI may lead to a loss of jobs, but this happens without it as well. Studies show that
the amount of jobs lost to the introduction of AI, is the same amount that happens every two
months. Layoffs and people leaving their jobs voluntarily are a big part of this. On top of that
economies are dynamic, so AI may strengthen this occurrence, or diminish it. There’s no
telling which without looking at the economic stability of a specific period. Now, something a
lot of AI supporters say on this question, is the fact that large numbers of jobs are lost but
even more are created (Eubanks, 2019).

People fear robots may take over human jobs, and in some way this may be true. Jobs will
disappear (called the creative destruction of jobs), but even more will be created or
enhanced. Take search engines for an example. Google, Bing, Yahoo offered us a way of
looking up all the information we need, which led to jobs to support this innovation. In this
specific example, Search Engine Optimization has become an important jobs to enhance
these search engines, and this didn’t exist 20 years ago (Eubanks, 2019).

Of course, not all jobs will be immune to the change Artificial Intelligence will bring. But this
doesn’t necessarily mean that it will lead to the destruction of your job. In most cases, a
change in skill set will be needed. Generally, that will be to interact with the specific AI
introduced at the workplace (Eubanks, 2019). In a seminar we went to last semester, given
by Dr. Terence Tse (professor at Hult Business School, specialized on the subject of AI), he
told us that Artificial Intelligence is not yet able to make decisions itself, and can only do
what it is programmed to do. For that programming, you obviously need humans. And not
only for that part. It needs constant feedback to learn and adapt. Hence, it will be more likely
that machine and human will need to work together, and will learn from one another.
Besides, we may depend heavily on machinery, but humans are still the backbone of every
company. AI may help departments with identifying how long employees will stay within a
position (or even the company), at what time new candidates will be needed, etc (N, sd).
What may happen, is that a gap could be created between the front-runners and non-

adopters. Obviously, this depends from company to company. Front-runners will likely
benefit disproportionally, which will result in employees having the chance to develop their
positions in something that can cooperate with the AI-advancements. On the other hand,
people working for companies that slack behind on these innovations, will feel that it’s harder
to adapt to this, and definitely if they leave to look for companies who are already way ahead
of this (Jeongmin Seong, Jacques Bugin, James Manyika, Michael Chui, & Raoul Joshi,
2018).

Conclusion: It highly depends from time to time, from industry to industry and from company
to company. However, we can deduct from our research, that most jobs won’t be destroyed,
and even more will only be enhanced by the introduction of Artificial Intelligence in
companies. If people are willing to change, and adapt their skillset to these innovations, they
will only benefit from it themselves, and won’t feel any repercussions.

Won’t AI widen the gap between countries even more?

After doing some research we found an article from Mckinsey & Company. Mckinsey &
Company is a company who helps organizations across the public, private, and social sector
create the change that matters. (About us, sd)
we already know that artificial intelligence has a big potential to global economic activity. but
will it widen the gap between countries even more? the company did research about this and
there were two main subjects. The first subject is that there is a large potential for AI
contribute to global economic activity. The second subject is directly related to our second
questions.
What the company did is they looked at five big categories of Artificial Intelligence. The five
categories are:
1. Computer vision
2. Natural language
 3. Virtual assistance
4. Robotic process automation
5. Advanced machine learning.
By doing research the company concluded that by 2030 the average simulation shows that
70% of all the company’s worldwide might adopted to at least one type of Artificial
Intelligence. But of course, by adopting AI there are also some barriers. These barriers might
hinder rapid adoption and absorption.
Now to go back to our real questions. AI will widen the gap between countries even more.
Countries might need to look for some strategies and responses because AI-adoption is
going really fast.

The countries who adopt the AI really fast could have a big increase on developing
countries. Numbers have shown that a well-developed country will have an additional 20 to
25 percent in net economic while less developed countries only have an increase of only 5
to 15 percent. This is because of less developed countries don’t have the chance to choose.
Most of the countries are getting pushed Artificial Intelligence to capture higher productivity
growth as their own gross domestic product grows very slow.
High developed countries have a high wage rates which means that they have more
motivation to substitute labor with more sophisticated machines. If you compare this with
less developed countries, we conclude that these countries tend to have other ways. The put
more focus on catching up with best practices and rearrangement their industries. Through
this the countries have less encouragement to adopt Artificial Intelligence. But of course, this
is not for every developing country. If we look to China, we can see that they have an
opportunity to become a global leader in AI supply chain.
AI can also have an impact on the companies and the workers. There is a possibility that
that these modern technologies could lead to a performance gap between front-runners1 and
nonadopters2. Research has shown that if you adapt AI by 2030 you can possibly double
your cash flow. The demand for jobs could shift to other tasks. This can be from repetitive
task toward more socially and cognitively driven skills. By 2030 there would be a decline of
share of total employment to around 30 percent. But there is also good news. In the
nonrepetitive sector that requires digital skills, increasing from 40 percent to more than 50

1
A company that fully absorb tools across their enterprises
2
Companies that don’t adopt AI technologies
percent. (Jeongmin Seong, Jacques Bugin, James Manyika, Michael Chui, & Raoul Joshi,
2018)

How is AI going to change our lives?

Nowadays artificial intelligence has become significantly important in our daily lives and is by
far seen as most important technology. The near future where robots will be able to take
away our lives isn’t far away. It could actually change every aspect of our lives as robots will
be able to do everything what we can, but in a better and more efficient way.

Self-driving cars
An example can be found in the automotive industry, namely: self-driving cars. Artificial
intelligence enables vehicles to drive themselves as it uses a combination of sensors,
cameras, radar and AI to travel without any human intervention. Companies testing
autonomous cars include Audi, BMW, Google, Tesla, Volkswagen and Volvo. Furthermore,
self-driving cars have a better safety record than humans which is hardly to believe. Most
road accidents are caused by humans due to being drunk, driving too fast, etc. (Pritchard,
2018). Unlike humans, AI drivers never look down on their phone, quickly send a text
message or have the tendency to fall asleep. Google already enabled self-driving cars but
wait till 2030 and we will also have AI drivers for trains and planes. Pilots will still be needed
for putting information into the data system, but the jetliner will be fully autonomous.
(Gammon, 2017)

Crime prevention
Furthermore, AI can help crime prevention. It can quickly analyze information from big
databases to help solve crimes. In the UK, police officers are using this technology to predict
where a crime is happening or will happen shortly via AI mapping.

Healthcare
Artificial emotional intelligence is slowly being implemented in hospitals and in healthcare
industries. The technology makes it possible to better analyze data and customization to the
genes, environment and lifestyle of each individual. Nowadays, medicine is sold for the
average person, but AI can change this in to personalized medicines based on our exact
genome.

China, the world’s biggest camera surveillance network

At the moment, China is working on a network made out of surveillance cameras. They are
building the biggest supervising system in the world for monitoring their own citizens. There
are close to 200 million cameras installed and counting. China has always been monitoring
their citizens mainly through the internet use and blocking certain websites and content. But
now they are taking things to the next level by installing cameras on every road and every
residential compound. It is their way of monitoring who’s doing what, where and when,
they’re building this one big national security system to track people their movements and be
a step ahead of crime (Post, 2018).
By installing this surveillance network we think that they are really turning the communist
slogan to a reality: “ The masses have sharp eyes”.
It isn’t all too bad, AI could help in crowd control by looking for hotspots where people are
gathering so that police can show up there and prevent overcrowding in certain places. The
system could also be used to track certain individuals through big crowds as to prevent them
for trying to get away in the crowd. If a criminal’s face is known the international database
then it could be linked with random face picking out of the crowd, this way police will be able
to find criminals faster (Wikipedia, 2019).
Something way different, they could set up a camera that has face recognition on the face of
a truck driver. Whenever it seems as he is too tired to drive, then the system can call their
bosses and tell them a driver has to make a rest.

Of course there are some concerns regarding this surveillance system. Some think this
controlling is going way too far, breaching personal space and privacy rules. Also some think
that it will be a way of unfairly targeting ethnic minorities. Maybe even cracking down on
dissidents and activists.

And by 2020 china even wants to rank all of its citizens based on their social credit. People
can be rewarded or punished according to their scores. For example; I you have a good
behavior score, you will be able to lend more money in the bank or have a bigger credit
score on your bankcard. But if you have a bad behavior score, you don’t get to leave the
country (Ma, 2018).

References
About us. (n.d.). Retrieved from McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com/about-
us/overview
Eubanks, B. (2019, January 01). The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business. Retrieved
from Spark: https://www.adp.com/spark/articles/2019/01/the-impact-of-artificial-
intelligence-in-business.aspx#
Gammon, K. (2017). USC University of Southern California. Retrieved from 5 Ways Artificial
Intellifence Will Change the World by 2050: https://news.usc.edu/trojan-family/five-
ways-ai-will-change-the-world-by-2050/
Hamstra, B. (2018, February 27). Nurse.org. Retrieved from Will These Nurse Robots Take
Your Job? Don't Freak Out Just Yet.: https://nurse.org/articles/nurse-robots-friend-
or-foe/
Jeongmin Seong, Jacques Bugin, James Manyika, Michael Chui, & Raoul Joshi. (2018,
September). Notes from the AI frontier: Modeling the impact of AI on the world
economy. Retrieved from McKinsey & Company:
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-intelligence/notes-from-the-
ai-frontier-modeling-the-impact-of-ai-on-the-world-economy
Ma, A. (2018, october 30). China has started ranking citizens with a creepy ‘social credit’
system . Retrieved from business insider: https://www.businessinsider.nl/china-
social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-
4/?international=true&r=US
N, A. (n.d.). 6 Ways in Which Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Business in the Coming
Decade. Retrieved from Data Driven Investor:
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/6-ways-in-which-artificial-intelligence-will-
impact-business-in-coming-decade-e11bb4b95bc2
Post, W. (2018, January 7). How China is building an all-seeing surveillance state. Retrieved
from youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uReVvICTrCM
Pritchard, N. (2018, September 7). New York Post. Retrieved from How Artificial Intelligence
will change every aspect of our lives: https://nypost.com/2018/09/07/how-artificial-
intelligence-will-change-every-aspect-of-our-lives/
Wikipedia. (2019, May 7). Mass surveillance in China. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence