[Sisibibi] Employment Competition with AI Robots Approaching Right Before Us

The global job market is becoming increasingly severe, and in the future, people will have to compete fiercely not only with other humans but also with AI robots to secure employment. According to recent reports, over 500 global companies have scouted the AI robot Amelia.

Amelia, a white-collar robot, can master a 300-page manual within 30 seconds and communicate in up to 20 languages, including English and French. It can also process natural language spoken by customers. By analyzing data such as voice pitch, it can even understand human emotions. At the same time, it can handle thousands of phone calls. Its appearance is that of a Caucasian woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. Dressed in a black suit, she can manage overall tasks from the front desk to back-office operations, including call center consultations and asset and human resource management. However, she neither eats nor sleeps and works 24/7 all year round, earning only $1,800 (approximately 2.2 million KRW) per month.

Amelia was developed by IPsoft, a company based in Manhattan, New York. This company specializes in AI software that creates digital employees. A digital employee is a human-like chatbot capable of communicating with humans and handling tasks on an AI platform. It was first developed in 2014 and has since been upgraded to version 6. IPsoft also launched the world's first online hiring platform for digital employees called Digitalworkforce.AI. When companies specify the tasks they need on the webpage, a digital employee specialized in those tasks is immediately transferred to the company's system server through a secure server, completing the hiring process.

AI-based robot manufacturers like IPsoft are further attempting to develop systems that handle non-repetitive and knowledge-based work. This category includes problem-solving tasks performed by analysts, insurance planners, accountants, tax accountants, programmers, and others.

In 2016, a U.S. law firm hired an AI lawyer named Ross. Ross was created based on IBM's AI computer Watson, understands everyday human language, analyzes one billion legal documents per second, and works 24 hours a day without rest. It continuously learns new precedents and laws, becoming smarter over time. The fastest disappearing professions in the U.S. include legal experts and lawyers, largely due to AI.

AI doctors are said to be far more competent than human doctors. AI has already begun to be utilized in various medical fields such as cancer diagnosis and medical imaging data analysis. With the advancement of AI technology, it is predicted that 80% of doctors' jobs will disappear in the future.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, led by AI and robots, will deliver a tremendous shock to human society. Robots, which were previously used only in expensive device industries like semiconductors, automobiles, and steel, are now being applied to low-cost sneaker production, threatening the jobs of many low-wage workers. Autonomous taxis will take away a huge number of taxi driver jobs. High-income professions that rely on intellectual skills, such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants, are also classified as the top job groups to be replaced by AI. Futurist Jeremy Rifkin's "End of Work" is becoming a reality.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will transform our society into an innovative and disruptive paradigm of winner-takes-all until the AI singularity occurs in 2045. The storm of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is raging in the distance. We must not be complacent but establish thorough countermeasures and boldly put them into action.

Juhwan Lim, Advisor, Korea Information and Communication Industry Research Institute