There is a 50% chance that AI be able to perform all human tasks better than humans in 45 years, and all human jobs are expected to be automated within the next 120 years, according to a survey of 352 AI researchers who published at either the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems or the International Conference on Machine Learning in 2015. The survey was conducted by the University of Oxford and Yale University.
“Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will transform modern life by reshaping transportation, health, science, finance, and the military,” reads the study. “To adapt public policy, we need to better anticipate these advances.”
Survey respondents predict that AI will be able to translate languages better than humans by 2024, write high school–level essays by 2026, drive trucks by 2027, work in retail by 2031, write books by 2049 and perform surgery by 2053. Most recently, an AI developed by Google defeated the world’s best player in Go, a complex strategy game. In 2011, IBM’s Watson AI famously won a game of Jeopardy! against the world’s best players. AIs have been beating world champions in chess since 1997, when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov.
The most paradigm-shifting AI development that looks to be coming down the pike is the large-scale proliferation of self-driving cars. Transportation innovators like Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Tesla’s Elon Musk have predicted that automated vehicles will disrupt the industry over the course of the next 20 years, and Musk estimates “it will be very unusual” for cars that aren’t autonomous to be manufactured in the next decade. While it’s fun to watch machines win board games, automated transportation will have a dramatic impact on the world economy, as driving in various forms is one of the planet’s largest sources of jobs.
In a recent cover story, Newsweek’s Kevin Maney detailed several of the ways AI will transform health care, such as AI software that understands a person’s genetic makeup being able to diagnose illnesses. Researchers are just now beginning to understand the ways in which automation can interact with the human body, and the impact AI will have on the health industry in the coming decades is impossible to estimate, except the idea that it will be significant.
Many, including Musk, have argued that the rise in automation will force governments to establish a “universal basic income,” as so many jobs will be replaced by machines that unemployment will reach unprecedented levels.