Your agony aunt isn’t real, her replies to your emotional and relationship problems are composed by using Artificial Intelligence. Does this invalidate her advice? The issue is not that the advice comes from AI and not a real person but that the agony aunt doesn’t know you, all she has to go on is your brief description of the problem. So any advice is generalised to anyone in a similar position.
Are there jobs that AI couldn’t do, caring jobs, people focused jobs that involve establishing a personal relationship? Jobs like teacher, nurse, social worker? Like the agony aunt certain elements of these jobs could be done by AI. But . Could AI talk a jumper off a bridge? Could AI get through to a disruptive pupil? Could AI comfort a bereaved parent? Could AI bring out the best in a team? Could AI help someone rebuild their self esteem and confidence? In other words could AI develop a rapport with an individual, connect with them at an emotional level?
What human abilities set us apart from machines? AI is faster, smarter more efficient and more profitable but machines can’t connect with humans on an emotional level (not yet anyway). AI can set your work targets and monitor your performance but if that performance dips can AI respond like a compassionate manager, use their knowledge of you as a person and your relationship to support you through this rough period?
But the next step in AI development will be to make it warm and fuss ,more human, such as teaching it small talk. So future communications might start with a comment about how your football team did at the weekend, an enquiry about how your daughters driving lessons are going, how your elderly parents are adjusting to life in sheltered housing or maybe some harmless gossip about what happened on the HR Christmas team meal. But this is still social and emotional interaction at a superficial level. Perhaps the last human job will be in HR as it is hard to imagine a time when we won’t need a human to manage people/AI conflict.
