Dubai will soon be introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its government sectors, a media report said.
A new Artificial Intelligence (AI) smart lab will soon begin training government officials to implement AI in a wide variety of tasks that will make lives easier, reported Khaleej Times on Tuesday.
The lab, launched on Monday during a workshop by the Smart Dubai Office (SDO) and Smart Dubai Government Establishment, will begin training a batch of 200 persons next month, but will later on be open to researchers, students and the general public, said the report.
“To move towards the future, we have to redefine government and embed AI in our services. We have no choice but to embrace technology,” said Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director-General of Smart Dubai Office.
“We want to replace call centres and help parents choose schools for their children using cognitive computing,” she said.
An official said that the government wants “to look at how we can integrate AI into government services and city experiences”.
“Unlike humans, machines can surf through hundreds of journals in a minute, be consistent across activities and avoid making mistakes,” said the official, adding that AI helps humans to make better decisions.
While studies have shown that AI will replace 50 per cent of all jobs by 2025, Noah Raford, Chief Operations Officer of Dubai Future Foundation, said the technology will be more like a helpful colleague, reported the daily.
“Intelligent robots won’t handle specific human relation interaction, but will become a tool in serving and supporting the human being. Therefore, it isn’t very effective for us as governments and colleagues to think that robots will be stealing our jobs,” said Raford, adding that AI should be thought of as “New Collar Jobs”.
With machines growing more intelligent every year, Raford added AI will revolutionise everyday life by understanding human needs.
More than 10 million UK workers are at high risk of being replaced by robots within 15 years as the automation of routine tasks gathers pace in a new machine age, a report said on Friday.
The report by the consultancy firm PwC found that 30 per cent of jobs in Britain were potentially under threat from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI).
In some sectors, half the jobs could go, the Guardian reported.
The report predicted that automation would boost productivity and create fresh job opportunities, but it said action was needed to prevent the widening of inequality that would result from robots increasingly being used for low-skill tasks.
PwC said 2.25 million jobs were at high risk in wholesale and retailing – the sector that employs most people in the UK – and 1.2 million were under threat in manufacturing, 1.1 million in administrative and support services and 950,000 in transport and storage.
Jon Andrews, the head of technology and investments at PwC, said: “There’s no doubt that AI and robotics will rebalance what jobs look like in the future, and that some are more susceptible than others.”
Education and health and social care were the two sectors seen as least threatened by robots because of the high proportion of tasks seen as hard to automate, the report added.
The PwC study is the latest to assess the potential for job losses and heightened inequality from AI, the Guardian added.
IANS
