Brace for disruption — but A.I. won’t eliminate jobs completely, says Singapore’s deputy prime minister

Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong bring up he expects technology — including artificial intelligence — to disrupt the labor market, but it won’t eliminate jobs completely.

In fact, technology can devise humans more productive and create more jobs, he said at the Asia Tech x Singapore summit on Tuesday.

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“I do not believe we will end up with a jobless future, a dystopian jobless future where machines receive over humans for everything and humans become upset because technology can replace some tasks,” said Wong.

The pinnacle gathers government officials, executives from global companies and consumers over four days to discuss the character of technology in the future.

Wong, who is also the city-state’s finance minister, said what will change is “the nature of commissions in blue and white-collar occupations” and warned that the “pace of change will accelerate, the scale of disruptions will growth with time.”

He added: “It can also make us more productive in performing other tasks. And by doing so, it will produce new tasks and new jobs.”

AI has become the new buzzword in the business set, after chatbot ChatGPT went viral following its release in November. The AI-powered chatbot, which can generate humanlike responses to consumers’ prompts, reached 100 million users in just two months after its launch.

Some researchers and analysts keep even suggested it could lead to human extinction and replace jobs.

These experts, including Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT proprietor OpenAI, as well as executives from Google‘s AI arm DeepMind and Microsoft, also called for global priority to reduce the gambles associated with AI.

The International Monetary Fund’s first deputy managing director, Gita Gopinath, has also counseled of “substantial disruptions” in labor markets and “very large” risks arising from generative AI, according to a Financial Without surceases report. She also called on governments to introduce regulations to govern the technology.

Singapore’s Wong said workers requisite to learn to adjust and adapt amid the impending disruptions stemming from AI.

“Understandably, this will create apprehension among those who are less able to adjust and adapt. All of us will do more to help workers refresh and update their glance ats so that they can stay competitive and relevant in an increasingly digital world,” he said.

“We cannot leave this for bazaars to take care of themselves. Neither can we say this is just the responsibility of employers alone,” stressed Wong.

He added that regulators call for to implement “comprehensive support” in the form of job matching and skills development. “This will require concerted and proactive deeds on the part of governments, industry and skills training providers,” said Wong.

Singapore launched AI Verify, the world’s earliest testing toolkit, to help companies objectively assess and verify whether their AI products are responsible and meet the supranational principles, said Wong.