ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE REGIONS
Recently I was lucky enough to attend a workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Regions. The workshop focused on the potential contribution of AI to one specific set of regions – rural and remote Australia – but the issues and ideas discussed at that forum are equally applicable to many other parts of the world. AI is a technology built on already established intellectual traditions, essentially tasking machines to identify patterns in large data sets and generating probabilities around likely outcomes and actions to be taken.
AI is an interesting beast. As one of my colleagues, Prof Anthony Elliott, notes: we commonly talk about AI as being a feature of the future, but we fail to realise that we already live in an AI-enabled world. AI already reaches into the operations of finance organisations as they assess applications for loans; it powers the work of many of the large on-line shopping enterprises; and it is even used in maximising the efficiency of elevators in many large office towers.
But there can be no denying that AI is likely to become more prevalent as we progress through the 21st century. AI is seen to be fundamental to the technology-led ‘fourth industrial revolution’ that is challenging governments to find new policies that generate employment, while also challenging the education sector to provide training appropriate to this new economic paradigm.
There can be no denying that AI is likely to generate significant change in the economies of many cities and regions. Technological innovations in networked, automated artificial intelligence (AI) and associated robotics will transform work and employment over the coming decades. The impacts are expected to be profound and equivalent to those evident with the onset of the industrial revolution in the 18th century (WEF 2016). Technological development now threatens entire professions and has been heralded by some as foreshadowing a ‘jobless future’.
The Australian Industry Report (2014) concluded 500,000 jobs could soon be automated, while Frey & Osborne (2013) predicted half of all employment in the UK could be replaced by robotics. Deloitte (2014) has suggested one third of the Australian economy faces impending digital disruption – a ‘short fuse, big bang’ scenario, with white collar jobs (accountants, lawyers, bank tellers and supermarket staff) threatened by machine intelligence.
On the other hand, AI could revolutionise manufacturing in advanced economies, including in the UK, the US, Australia, France and Canada, effectively allow the ‘reshoring’ of jobs previously sent overseas as new technologies reduce production costs and encourage the co-location of manufacturing with design and R&D.
AI offers considerable potential for Australia’s non metropolitan regions, because while these regions generate over two thirds of national income, they only accommodate one third of the population, and some of the employment is dirty, dangerous and tedious. In many industries – such as meat processing, mining, irrigated agriculture and even in the provision of health services – there are frequently acute workforce shortages. The development of whole regions may be held up by a shortage of workers to work in vineyards, provide skilled staff to tourism businesses or effectively manage transport and logistics. In addition, AI can potentially add value to regional economies by opening up completely new industries, reducing risks and assisting food producers in making the decisions needed to maximise productivity.
There can be no doubt AI will remain a feature of the economic landscape nationally and at the local scale. There is considerable potential for AI to make the greatest contribution in those regions and cities that are currently challenged economically, and that is an attractive prospect.
—Andrew Beer
References
Australian Government (2014) Australian Industry Report 2014, Department of Industry, Canberra.
Deloitte (2014) Digital Disruption- Short Fuse, Big Bang, Building the Lucky Country, Report No. 2, Deloitte Sydney.
Frey, C., & Osborne, M. (2017) The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114: 254–280.
WEF (2016) The Future of Jobs. World Economic Forum. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf