Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus on Thursday warned the world about the negative effects of artificial intelligence. He was speaking at the eighth edition of Social Business Day in Bengaluru.
Warning multinational organisations against excessive use of AI and automation, Yunus said, “Technology will expedite our extinction on the planet Earth. It may sound funny because technology is supposed to help us and make things easier. But the way artificial intelligence is invading the world, it will soon replace us with machines to do our job,” said the 78-year-old social entrepreneur and banker.
He went on to give a dystopian picture of humans being made “beggars” if left at the mercy of AI and machines.
“Almost 30-40 percent of the youth is unemployed in several prosperous economies. And with the AI, people who are employed won’t have their jobs as smart machines are taking over,” Yunus warned.
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Yunus is only one in a long string of influential personalities who have sounded the alarm bells regarding automation, artificial intelligence, and its effect on employment. Last year, Infosys co-founder and celebrated corporate thought leader NR Narayana Murthy had also said that AI was “worrisome” for freshers in the IT sector.
At the World Economic Forum in January 2018, Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba had said that AI was going to be a big threat to humans. “AI, big data are a threat to human beings. AI and robots are going to kill a lot of jobs because, in the future, these will be done by machines,” he had said.
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Other noted personalities such as the late physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla and SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk have already sounded the alarm bells with regards to artificial intelligence and the harm it can incur on human beings.
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