Letter: ​Artificial Intelligence revolution could offer multiple job and skills opportunities

Northern Ireland has an important role to play. Our strong cybersecurity industry could receive a significant boost, creating demand for highly trained and skilled people.

AI could become one of the greatest engines of productivity, job creation and economic growth of our generation across the whole island of Ireland.

Today's debate is dominated by the jobs AI might replace. Far less attention is being paid to the new jobs, industries and markets it could create.

History gives us grounds for optimism, although not complacency. Every major technological revolution has displaced tasks and occupations. Mechanisation changed manual work, electricity transformed factories and computers automated calculations, administration and entire business processes.

But higher productivity also reduced costs, enlarged markets and enabled completely new products, services, businesses and occupations to emerge.

Recent economic research supports this argument. Automation can reduce employment in the tasks being replaced, but productivity gains can boost demand elsewhere. Technological progress can also create entirely new roles.

The International Labour Organization's latest research concludes that job transformation is more likely than wholesale replacement for most workers exposed to generative AI. OECD workplace research also indicates that job reorganisation has so far been more common than job displacement.

But there is another major employment opportunity receiving far too little attention: who is going to make AI safe?

As increasingly powerful AI systems move into finance, healthcare, defence, transport, government and industry, we will need skilled people working in AI assurance, governance, auditing, cybersecurity, model evaluation, testing, compliance, risk management, monitoring and human oversight.

As AI becomes more capable, ensuring it remains safe, controllable and beneficial to humanity becomes more important, not less. AI assurance and governance could develop into a major global industry.

There will also be wider skills opportunities, with many existing jobs and professions transformed by AI.

Instead of simply asking, “How many jobs will be lost?”, we should also ask: “How will AI make us more productive, and how many new businesses, markets and professions will it create?”

Previous generations were told technological advances would dramatically reduce the amount of work people needed to do. Yet with the advent of computers and the internet, we became busier than ever, continually creating new work, businesses and professions.

AI could repeat that pattern on an extraordinary scale.

The challenge is to ensure people have the education, training and skills to participate in what comes next. The AI economy will need people capable of applying AI, supervising it, challenging it, regulating it and keeping it safe.

That could become one of the greatest employment opportunities of the AI revolution.

Brian Pope, Banbridge