Global Courant
Life is no longer as we knew it ten years ago. We are in a technical dispensation and the world is changing so fast that one could lose pace with the minute by minute evolution on the world stage. Technology is rapidly revolutionizing the way we live and behave in so many ways. While we embrace technology and the convenience it guarantees, there are global concerns about whether technology – especially artificial intelligence (AI) – will take away people’s livelihoods.
(KI) is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings (humans). The term is often applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from experience.
Jacques Attali & Yann LeCun. Photo credit: VivaTech
And that’s the problem! AI is built to function like humans, but in a more advanced and sophisticated way. As tech giants like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft race to roll out AI-related products amid a global tech industry layoff, people’s fears of losing jobs to AI are justified. Especially people whose work is not mechanical. AI is disrupting the future of work and sparking conversations worldwide, most notably at the ongoing VIVA Technology conference in Paris, France.
“If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sadness, we must achieve more than just the wonders of technology. We also need to show them a glimpse of the world as it was made, not just the way it looked when we finished it. – Lyndon B. Johnson, former President of the United States of America.
Debunking the myth that AI will do away with accounting jobs in a dubbed panel session Future-proof SMEs: strategies for success, Arthur Waller, CEO of Pennylane, confirmed that AI cannot take away accounting jobs. PennyLane is an open-source software framework for quantum machine learning, quantum chemistry, and quantum computing, with the ability to run on any hardware.
“When it comes to doing accounting, AI won’t have a big impact. The reason is that accounting data is highly structured data and not natural language. While the revolution we see in AI revolves around natural language,” said Waller. He does note, however, that AI prefers to influence the advisory role of accountants. This means that AI is limited to the point at which it was created. So as intelligent as AI is, it still cannot surpass human intelligence.
In another panel session on AI, Yann LeCun, VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta, noted that most human knowledge has nothing to do with language. “Part of the human experience is not captured by AI systems. They have no physical intuition. It stops them from planning actions in the world. By making it bigger, they don’t reach human intelligence.
As technology companies work to create AI solutions, there is a need for the right regulatory framework that ensures their safe use. “AI is a future that cannot be prevented, but must be regulated by countervailing powers. If we look at technology without ethics, we are dead. Who’s going to draw the boundaries? Countervailing powers must exist to not just let the engineers do what they want,” said Jacques Attali, futurologist and president at Attali Associates.
It is important to note that countries are also investing in the development of AI infrastructure. Speaking at the conference, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would invest €500 million to make AI “much faster and stronger”.
About Viva technology
Viva Technology (VivaTech) is an annual technology conference, dedicated to innovation and startups, held in Paris, France. VivaTech was founded in 2016 by Publicis Groupe and Groupe Les Echos. From Africa to Asia, startups, VCs and corporate partners come together at VivaTech to empower local heroes to become world champions.
