Microsoft Europe executive Jeremy Rollison said it was necessary to “invest in this type of technology so that we all have access to it.
The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will lead to the emergence of a “new economy”, a “revolution comparable to that brought about by the appearance of electricity or the invention of the printing press” and this will directly affect employment and the job profiles of workers of the future, according to Jeremy Rollison, Microsoft executive in Europe.
This was argued by Rollison, Director of Government Affairs at Microsoft Corporation in the European Union (EU) on Tuesday at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024), which is being held from October 19 to 24 in Santiago de Compostela (northwest).
He therefore warned that in this new economic context, “new needs” and the demand for “new professions that have the ability to handle these tools” are emerging.
In his opinion, “countries that are able to adapt to AI changes first will have a competitive advantage and greater growth compared to the rest .
” As an example, he said that given the high percentage of doctors in Spain who will retire in the next five years, “AI will not replace humans, but it will be able to help professionals with medical diagnoses.”
He added that “tasks that used to take an hour can now be done in ten minutes,” but it is necessary “to invest in this type of technology so that we all have access” to it.
At the same forum, American economist David H. Autor, professor at the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), pointed out that what will mark the “difference between jobs that can be replaced” by AI and those that are essential is “experience that generates value.”
Speaking at the panel on the ‘Economic Impact of AI: Threats and Opportunities’, Autor stressed that the questions that should be asked are whether AI will be used to “extend and empower expertise or to devalue it and eliminate jobs”.
He therefore stated that if we want to “extend the value of experience”, we must “bet on the opportunity that R&D represents in this field” and encouraged workers to “generate higher-value work that is capable of making better use of technology”.
The European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024) brings together more than 1,600 congressmen who are leading international experts in Artificial Intelligence research.
