AI tools need to be humane but not cause job losses, expert says

Recent statistics from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicate that 40% of employment across the world is exposed to AI with 40% and 26% exposure for emerging markets and low-income countries respectively.

While experts continue to express concerns about the likelihood of many high-skilled jobs and routine tasks being affected, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Expert Lawrence Adu-Gyamfi recommended in an interview with GSW a way that AI tools can complement the human workforce.

According to him, governments and companies involved in the development of AI tools must ensure that there are elements embedded to complement human work rather than take over jobs.

“It is cutting some people out because some people cannot rise up to gain the skills to partake in the new jobs that are coming. I think organisations, governments, and people who have the power, when looking at these things need to be conscious about it to say that let’s not just jump in and replace people just because we have a new tool that can replace people. It needs to be a bit humane as well to say let’s see how we can complement, let’s find a tool that can complement people’s work or maybe we need to actually educate or train people on how to use these tools,” he told GSW.

The Director of Products at Ghana Natural Language Processing (NLP), a company focused on local language processing in Africa and its applications to local problems, indicated that regardless of the fears of its impact on jobs worldwide, AI is also providing job opportunities for many.

“We also need to look at what’s considered the short-term and the long-term impacts. Some jobs definitely will be displaced in the short-term but then there’s also the part of what new jobs do we not know that are going to come about as a result of these new AI tools,” he noted.

He also urged for training and education by companies particularly focused on routine tasks and high-skilled jobs to empower people to use AI tools to enhance their work.

“We should be forewarned about the jobs that will be impacted but we also need to be forearmed, we need to prepare for the new jobs that are going to come about as a result. We need to inform people that these tools are there and this is how they could be used in our work,” he added.

Ghana NLP has 3 apps including the Khaya app which focuses on Ghanaian languages like Twi and Gurune and has expanded its work to include languages including Yoruba in Nigeria and Kikuyu, Kimeru, and Luo in Kenya.