Technology Expert’s Shocking Claim: 50% of Jobs Will Be Wiped out by AI

In recent years, experts have provided many different estimates for how many human jobs will be lost to automation, and in what time frame. However, one technologist from China has given what may be the most dramatic prediction for how many jobs artificial intelligence is going to destroy.

Kai-Fu Lee is a world renown investor and tech expert who founded Google’s subsidiary in China, as well as the venture capital firm known as Sinovation Ventures. In an interview with CNBC, he explained why he thinks that AI is going to eliminate half of all current jobs within 10 years.

“Traditional companies are really slow. The banks, insurance companies, the hospitals, they really don’t understand how A.I. is already shaping the world, and they don’t understand that they possess something that’s really the biggest treasure… data.” And that data will allow AI to do more than what an army of human workers could accomplish. “The companies we invested in, one company can recognize three million faces simultaneously. No one can do that. One company can give out loans in eight seconds to any person who wants it.”

However, Kai-Fu Lee seems to have a much more positive outlook in regards to AI. He doesn’t think that automation is going to lead to rampant unemployment, wealth inequality, and poverty, as many futurists have claimed in the past. “These are things that are super human, and we think this will be in every industry and will probably replace 50 percent of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind, and wipe out poverty.”

So what kinds of jobs will replace the professions that are wiped out by automation? Lee believes that jobs which require human to human contact will be untouchable by machines. Namely, jobs in the service industry. “I think we need to change people’s thinking that service is a first-class job, and that we need to do what the machines are not good at…Touching ones heart with your heart is something that machines, I believe, will never be good at.”