White House addresses fears of robots replacing humans: technology executive
The White House on Thursday announced the creation of a major task force on artificial intelligence with business leaders in the technology industry.
Paul Daugherty, an executive from Accenture who attended the summit, said they addressed concerned about robots replacing humans in the workplace.
“The fear that we have is in the short and medium term, there will be displacement as certain jobs are automated by artificial intelligence,” he said.
However, the real issue, he said, is not the lack of jobs but the fact that there is a very large skills gap.
“We have lots of jobs today,” Daugherty said during an appearance on “Mornings with Maria. “But we have the issue of how do we give people the relevant skills and reskill people fast enough to fill these jobs.”
While there have been several efforts in the education system starting on the elementary school level all the way through higher education, Daugherty said, more programs are needed to “crank out” the right professionals who can develop artificial intelligence.
Even so, the programs, especially on the higher education level, don’t come cheap, with some costing up to $70,000. But Daugherty sees this as an opportunity for people to enter the workforce in a new way through apprenticeships.
“We can revitalize the role of community colleges in this process to get people in their communities with the different forms of education and different onboarding into career paths,” Daugherty said.
He added, “I think we need other community-based platforms online learning capabilities that anybody can access at any time.”