Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems stand to threaten jobs primarily in the financial, legal and technology sectors, a MLIV Pulse survey says.
What is more striking about the results — more than two-thirds of 292 respondents went on to say they did not view their own jobs as being at risk anytime soon, even though they worked predominantly in the financial sector.
AI has been in development in some form for decades, but a surge of interest in so-called generative AI — most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E products — has sparked widespread excitement among investors who believe it could also generate massive financial rewards.
Photo: Reuters
MLIV Pulse survey participants were split almost evenly on whether these kinds of technologies were worth investing in.
There was an evident lack of professional use of any kind of AI from a majority of investors, with only 12 percent saying they used one and just 27 percent saying they planned to. More than half of all respondents said they are not even considering using AI to help them invest.
Businesses and investors are in a race to become go-to names for technology that can create media such as text and pictures from simple prompts — or hold human-like conversations on a wide variety of topics, from whether a cat would win a fight with an eagle to practical considerations about world events or school projects.
Still, the promise of tools such as ChatGPT leaves room for some investors to desire, with only 49 percent of respondents saying they planned to buy stocks with exposure to such generative AI tools.
Overall, about 41 percent of all respondents said they intended to increase exposure to technology stocks more broadly, while 38 percent said they would hold steady over the next six months.
Even before the current wave of interest in AI, the question of whether smart automation would create more opportunities than it displaces has been a topic of great interest to workers and businesses alike.
This year, many of the companies making job cuts at unprecedented levels are also the ones investing billions in building out their AI capabilities.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to