WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Imagine a customer-service center that speaks your language, no matter what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence<\/u><\/a> translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So an Alorica representative who speaks, say, only Spanish can field a complaint about a balky printer or an incorrect bank statement from a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Alorica wouldn\u2019t need to hire a rep who speaks Cantonese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such is the power of AI. And, potentially, the threat: Perhaps companies won\u2019t need as many employees<\/u><\/a> \u2014 and will slash some jobs \u2014 if chatbots can handle the workload instead. But the thing is, Alorica isn\u2019t cutting jobs. It\u2019s still hiring aggressively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The experience at Alorica \u2014 and at other companies, including furniture retailer IKEA \u2014 suggests that AI may not prove to be the job killer that many people fear. Instead, the technology might turn out to be more like breakthroughs of the past \u2014 the steam engine, electricity, the internet: That is, eliminate some jobs while creating others. And probably making workers more productive in general, to the eventual benefit of themselves, their employers and the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said he thinks AI \u201cwill affect many, many jobs \u2014 maybe every job indirectly to some extent. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to lead to, say, mass unemployment. We have seen other big technological events in our history, and those didn\u2019t lead to a large rise in unemployment. Technology destroys but also creates. There will be new jobs that come about.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n At its core, artificial intelligence empowers machines to perform tasks<\/u><\/a> previously thought to require human intelligence. The technology has existed in early versions for decades, having emerged with a problem-solving computer program, the Logic Theorist, built in the 1950s at what\u2019s now Carnegie Mellon University. More recently, think of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Or IBM\u2019s chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, which managed to beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AI really burst into public consciousness in 2022, when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT<\/u><\/a>, the generative AI tool that can conduct conversations, write computer code, compose music, craft essays and supply endless streams of information. The arrival of generative AI has raised worries that chatbots will replace freelance writers, editors, coders, telemarketers, customer-service reps, paralegals and many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAI is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function,\u2019’ Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the widespread assumption that AI chatbots will inevitably replace service workers, the way physical robots took many factory and warehouse jobs, isn\u2019t becoming reality in any widespread way \u2014 not yet, anyway. And maybe it never will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The White House Council of Economic Advisers said last month that it found \u201clittle evidence that AI will negatively impact overall employment.\u2019\u2019<\/u><\/a> The advisers noted that history shows technology typically makes companies more productive, speeding economic growth and creating new types of jobs in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They cited a study this year led by David Autor, a leading MIT economist: It concluded that 60% of the jobs Americans held in 2018 didn\u2019t even exist in 1940, having been created by technologies that emerged only later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks job cuts, said it has yet to see much evidence of layoffs that can be attributed to labor-saving AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve started seeing companies saying they\u2019ve saved lots of money or cut jobs they no longer need because of this,\u2019\u2019 said Andy Challenger, who leads the firm\u2019s sales team. \u201cThat may come in the future. But it hasn\u2019t played out yet.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, the fear that AI poses a serious threat to some categories of jobs isn\u2019t unfounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider Suumit Shah, an Indian entrepreneur who caused a uproar last year by boasting that he had replaced 90% of his customer support staff with a chatbot named Lina. The move at Shah\u2019s company, Dukaan, which helps customers set up e-commerce sites, shrank the response time to an inquiry from 1 minute, 44 seconds to \u201cinstant.\u201d It also cut the typical time needed to resolve problems from more than two hours to just over three minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about AI\u2019s ability to handle complex queries with precision,\u2019’ Shah said by email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cost of providing customer support, he said, fell by 85%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,\u2019\u2019 Shah posted on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dukaan has expanded its use of AI to sales and analytics. The tools, Shah said, keep growing more powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s like upgrading from a Corolla to a Tesla,\u2019’ he said. \u201cWhat used to take hours now takes minutes. And the accuracy is on a whole new level.\u2019’<\/p>\n\n\n\n