Kenza Ait Si Abbou, how important will AI really become in the future?

BRIGITTE: Ms. Ait Si Abbou, we are having this conversation at ten o’clock in the morning – has artificial intelligence helped you in your job today?

Kenza Ait Si Abbou: Yes, the spam filter software that ensures that my email inbox remains free of spam emails. It sorts the emails not just based on certain words, but based on context, and also differentiates between relevant and not relevant. This is great for keeping track of your inbox.

And otherwise? Are there many AI tools that can take work off your hands?

In fact, I don’t use that many AI applications in my everyday job. Of course I tried ChatGPT, but more privately. I find the AI-based online dictionary Linguee useful. And of course artificial intelligence is at play when I use my cell phone, keyword: facial recognition. But otherwise …

Maybe it’s because of your current job? As a head of technology, your activities cannot be automated at all, according to the Job Futuromat from the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research. In other professions the situation seems to be more dramatic. In January, research from Goldman Sachs predicted that 300 million jobs could be lost worldwide due to AI. Is this scaremongering – or realistic?

Both. It is realistic that certain tasks will disappear because an AI does them just as well, perhaps even more reliably or faster. As a rule, these are repetitive tasks, activities that are carried out in exactly the same way over and over again. For example, scanning goods at the supermarket checkout. Soon only machines will be able to do this – in some places this is already the case today. But it is also true that supermarkets and other stores will continue to need people to advise customers. And AI also needs someone to develop, control and maintain it. That means: The jobs in this area will not disappear. But they will change. And new products and services will also emerge that require new jobs.

But what if the supermarket employee particularly likes working at the checkout? Or servicing robots is simply not her strength and that’s why she ends up unemployed?

Then you have to offer her alternatives and encourage her to continue her education so that she can perhaps work with AI, or to find out in which areas she can use her strengths. Sure: That’s easier to say than it is. And I don’t want to downplay the challenge, I just want to remind you that that we already had similar experiences in the industrial revolution, for example, and learned to master them. In the same way, we can now manage to deal with the current change.

Namely, how?

We should ensure that artificial intelligence, above all, monotonous, mechanical tasks. In order to have more time for what only we humans can do and what is currently often missing in our society: feeling other people’s feelings and reacting to them, having feelings yourself and showing them, being there for each other.

What could such a division of labor actually look like?

For example, radiologists could be assisted by AI in evaluating x-rays, for example in breast cancer screening. This would leave more time for discussions with the patients. Teachers could be relieved of administrative tasks and thus gain time to respond individually to their students.

That sounds good. On the other hand, your current book is about the fact that robots are now very capable of reading human emotions and reacting to them. That means: They are now competing with us there too.

This is actually an exciting development – which we can currently also observe when it comes to generative AI, i.e. the technology behind applications like ChatGPT, which themselves generate new texts, images or music. Before these programs became available to the masses, it was always said: Maybe the assembly line worker should fear that his job will be automated. This will never happen to knowledge workers such as notaries, but also to creative professionals such as screenwriters!

And now they’re exactly worried about their jobs.

Exactly. Because even if generative AI is not really creative, i.e. creates something completely new if it is intrinsically motivated, it can generate new texts or images. The result may be incorrect in terms of content, Formally, however, it can hardly be distinguished from a human work.

And you think that this scenario isn’t a threat in jobs where feelings play a major role?

First of all, it is amazing what AI can do in this area. By analyzing features such as facial expressions, eye movements and speech, robots can already tell quite well how we are feeling. And they can react to this in a way that makes us feel understood, even build a kind of relationship with them. For example, people who talk to so-called conversational AI, i.e. chatbots that have been trained to have human-like conversations, say that they are looking forward to this exchange, and some are even starting to tell the bot secrets They themselves say they haven’t spoken to anyone about it yet.

So instead of a psychotherapist, will I trust an AI in the future if I have psychological problems?

Some of these programs are actually already being used for therapeutic purposes, but in Germany they have so far only been approved as a wellness product, not as a medical product. Because here we should think carefully: Do we really want such tasks to be taken over by machines in the future? And if not: What should we do to ensure that it doesn’t happen – or takes place within a framework that is okay for us?

Would laws help to set limits here?

I think laws and clear guidelines from companies are very important, especially for the first time when we all have to get used to dealing with AI. But it would be even more important that we as a society develop an awareness of thiswhich skills we definitely want to leave to people and how we consciously strengthen these skills.

You mean: We should train our own emotional intelligence?

Exactly. And already at school. Currently, our children are still being stuffed with factual knowledge. In case of doubt, an AI delivers this more quickly. Let’s better strengthen the soft skills: empathy, teamwork, analytical and, above all, critical thinking. Because the big challenge of the future will be to distinguish right from wrong. The digital space is full of fake news, now reinforced by AI-generated texts, which, as I said, are not always true. And it is also completely personalized; What we see on social media varies from person to person. How are we supposed to talk to each other and achieve great things together if we only believe the contents of our own bubble to be true?

What makes you hope we can do this?

The belief that there are still many things that AI will never be able to do. For example, setting off the emotional fireworks of a human hug. Or create a real team feeling and togetherness. This requires empathy and pastoral care – and also the ability to tell stories that help us imagine a better world and work hard for it. These are all strengths that only we have. We should therefore devote much more time to them.

Bridget