Using AI is actually more expensive than human labour, study says

Good news (or bad news?): AI won’t be taking your job just yet, as a team of MIT researchers have found that replacing human workers with AI is still more expensive than continuing to use human labour.

In their research, the team examined the cost-effectiveness of using a computer vision system to complete “visual inspection” tasks. Across 800 different occupations, they discovered that just 23 per cent of workers’ wages would be “attractive to automate” as using AI was more costly than hiring human workers.

The team used a bakery worker as an example of one occupation where “visual inspection” is part of their role, as they must check ingredients to “ensure they are of sufficient quality”. This task, the researchers say, could “theoretically be replaced with a computer vision system by adding a camera and training the system to detect food that has gone bad.”

However, as this small “visual inspection” task represents just 6 per cent of a bakery’s worker’s role, automating it would still not negate the cost of “developing, deploying, and maintaining a computer vision system”. The researchers concluded it would not be “economical” to substitute human labour with AI at this hypothetical bakery.

The researchers did acknowledge that the situation could change. “Overall, our findings suggest that AI job displacement will be substantial, but also gradual – and therefore there is room for policy and retraining to mitigate unemployment impacts,” the paper reads.

It’s important to stress that much of the anxiety which surrounds AI ‘taking’ jobs is largely borne out of the decimation of the welfare state, making the possibility of unemployment a frightening prospect for most people. Plus, with AI still in the hands of bosses and tech companies, it’s hardly surprising that workers are concerned about how it will be used when they have no say in the matter. But if we can fix our broken welfare system and ensure employees have some control over how this technology is used in the workplace, AI has the power to change the world of work for the better.

John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that by 2000, technological advances would mean a 15-hour work week would be the norm in the UK. Clearly, this hasn’t happened, but according to economics professor David Spencer, there’s still hope. “Ways need to be found to reduce work via automation without imposing costs on workers,” he told Dazed last year. “We need to address more fundamental issues about who owns technology and how it is used. Workers cannot expect to benefit from technology while they have no stake in it and no influence over its nature and evolution [...] Using technology should be about reducing work time and making work more meaningful.”