Be prepared to be stunned out of jobs by artificial intelligence! When Co-Scientist managed to solve a ten-year old superbug mystery in just 48 hours, the world was indeed stunned. The shock is yet to wear off. In fact, shock is an understatement. All these years, we have been trying to drive home the point that artificial intelligence or AI will only facilitate and not steal our jobs. But all that confidence about AI not being a threat to employment is on its way out the window. Are we being a bit overconfident in thinking that human beings create AI and therefore, without their intervention AI is nothing?
Before we worry about this, let’s understand who or what Co-Scientist is. It is Google’s AI tool that managed to do in 48 hours what probably a whole team of dedicated and passionate scientists took a decade to do. This is not the level of accuracy and the kind of speed we had imagined when we said AI is a facilitator and not a threat was it?
Imagine the costs incurred by the researchers at Imperial College London who had been trying to find out why certain bacteria could resist antibiotics for a decade. Imagine the hours of study invested. Their efforts did bear fruit in ten years, which is a long time. Before celebrating the successful results of their labour, these triumphant scientists decided to confirm whether their hypothesis was correct. They turned to Co-Scientist to simply ‘test’ its abilities and competency. And what did Co-Scientist do? It not only gave them the same solution in just two days but also presented four more possibilities. Unbelievable!
Could somebody have leaked the research and fed it to Co-Scientist? Not a chance. This hypothesis, closely guarded by the researchers, was not shared with anyone. Nobody outside the team had access to the research or related documents and devices.
What is even more surprising is that the researchers have realised that all the four rather sensible additional possibilities suggested by Co-Scientist are valid too. One possibility was absolutely novel and had not even been thought of by these researchers.
So yes, this lot of stunned and shaken scientists has no reason not to see Co-Scientist replacing them. Of course they are saying that they are welcoming such AI assistance with open arms and are eager to work with AI to speed up research. Deep in their hearts, however, what is stopping them from wondering whether soon they will be working for AI, though?
When Google used the Gemini 2.0 AI system to create Co-Scientist it had only intended for it to be an ‘assistant’. It was expected to ‘collaborate’ with researchers and help them come up with new ideas that would lead to quicker discoveries in the field of science.
However, Co-Scientist turned out to be more intelligent and far smarter than expected. It appears to be capable of actually leading a team of researchers. In fact, who is to say that two versions later it will not be competent enough to conduct the research all by itself with the help of maybe a couple of human scientists? It is already quite clear that this super scientist can do much more than merely churn out research proposals and new hypotheses.
So yes, it looks like AI will take over the field of scientific and biomedical research.
What about human resources? This function cannot be completely taken over by AI, can it? After all, AI can only be used to screen resumes, match candidate profiles to the jobs and schedule interviews, right? It can also provide personalised feedback, analyse performance data, predict turnover rates, and even manage payroll, benefits and compliance work. By taking care of all these tasks, we are told that AI is able to allow HR personnel to focus on more strategic tasks. Like what? Lending emotional support to employees and trying to understand their mental state?
The HR fraternity can forget about resting easy. Why? Well, researchers have long been working on ways to help humanoid robots relate to people. They are trying to teach the machines to understand emotions and actually empathise. So what if social robots do encounter issues when it comes to sustaining human engagement over a period of time? Before long these challenges will be overcome for sure.
Researchers studying the role of empathy in long-term human-robot interactions (HRI) are trying to improve humanoid robots already equipped to measure the gaze of the human users, analyse their voice patterns and study their facial cues and postures so that they can interact effectively. To make them more effective, they just need to be equipped with the ability to respond on the basis of the emotional state of the person they are interacting with. Most existing robots already do manage to give standard reactions based on their readings. If humans are more intelligent and the actual brains behind these robots, it will not be long before they are able to optimise the abilities of the machine to judge human emotions and respond in a more appropriate and personal fashion.
Humans of course never tire of trying to assert their intelligence. They will definitely put in their all to ensure that machines are able to read and react to emotions too just like they themselves do. They will burn the midnight oil to create robots with a super high level of emotional intelligence.
The HR department, if it manages to survive these rapid advancements will just be hiring assistants for AI tools.
Jobs in healthcare aren’t safe either. Healthcare robots are already trained to recognise and respond to human emotions. They reduce stress in hospitals and clinics by displaying empathy, remembering facial expressions and conversations so that they can actually indulge in a dialogue accordingly for subsequent sessions or follow-ups.
With each passing day intelligent humans will work to make the robots better at handling social situations, and hence behave at par with humans if not better. By 2050, it is estimated that there will be about 1.6 billion senior citizens over the age of 65, in the world. That is a huge number. Will there be a shortage of hands? Even if there is, by then there will be enough humanoid robots to handle all of them.
Back in 2020 itself there was ProxEmo, a small wheeled robot that could guess how a human being felt from their gait. That means it was infused with enough intelligence to know when to interact with a person and when to steer clear from a person’s path depending on their mood. There was also an assisted living robot five years ago called ENRICHME, capable of helping the elderly to remain active mentally and physically. And with each passing day, human beings themselves are making the algorithms better and smarter.
So when we are told that AI will not take away jobs but will create new jobs, we need to read the statement as follows: AI will take away existing jobs and will create more jobs for AI developers, data scientists, machine learning experts and the likes. These are the professionals who will be able to work on AI and make it more human. They are getting closer to actually breathing life into robots.
What will this do to jobs and livelihood? According to a LinkedIn report, a whopping 98 per cent of business leaders in India are helping their organisations adopt AI faster. In fact, they are making this their priority in 2025. Need we say more?
Of course jobs are at risk. Why will organisations lean towards AI you ask? Why shouldn’t they would be the more appropriate question. Embracing AI would mean bidding farewell to worries about maintaining big and plush office spaces, employee well-being, employee engagement, burnout, sick leaves, increments, strikes, conflicts and even salaries! This list of benefits can get longer with each new version of an AI tool.
Surely the superior human brain that has created machines can also build machines that grow smarter and more intelligent and more lifelike every day? Therefore, the day cannot be far behind when advanced AI will replace humans; even those that are engaged in developing more advanced AI! Is that a possibility? Let’s wait for the next version of Co-Scientist to give us the answer or rather, just confirm our fears.
