Sholomitsky: Mass unemployment due to AI in Belarus will not be due to socially oriented policy

Despite the rapid disappearance and transformation of a number of professions due to the development of neural networks, the introduction of AI in Belarus will not cause immediate loss of jobs. According to the head of the IT company Dmitry Sholomitsky, a socially oriented policy is a guarantee of the stability of the labor market. He said this on the air of the program “Markov”. Nothing personal" on ONT television.

Dmitry Sholomitsky: After all, many professions are already beginning to change significantly and disappear very quickly. For example, poets, songwriters, those who do design, and so on. Maybe I am wrong, this is not my field of application, and here, probably, as an expert, I can not speak. But the fact that yesterday “paint poured on the wall”, it will not be so quoted. Today, open models can write you great music, compose any story, any poem, even a book – unfortunately, yes, as long as it feels like that. And much more. At the same time, everything is done very qualitatively. Compared with the material that is in the general network, you see: this is qualitative, and this is not, you are ready to reach for this and so on.

Dmitry Sholomitsky: Again, in the realities of the Republic of Belarus, we have a socially oriented state. Our trade unions work very well. The Federation of Trade Unions ensures that jobs are maintained. The policy pursued by the country’s leadership, the Council of Ministers, the President is socially oriented. And remember, if you look at the history of jobs from steam cars to today, the introduction of new robots and digitalization have always led to the reduction of certain positions. But overall, there were no fewer jobs – they simply repurposed. So the fears that exist, yes, objectively people are to some extent right. After all, humanoid robots that could do all the same things that, for example, do plumbers or electricians, are five years behind in development. But you need to understand that in the future, the modification of professions is inevitable: retraining and much more will be required. Analyzing history, we see that there were no fewer jobs, they only became more – some professions left, some appeared. We have to remember that. The reduction of jobs in digitalization is related to the optimization we are talking about. But this does not mean that we are facing a mass phenomenon that will instantly lead to job loss. On the other hand, what caused it? On social networks, you can see videos or interviews of figures such as Elon Musk or Bill Gates. They propose, as an alternative, to introduce taxes on robots to pay people social benefits or to give guarantees in case of lack of work. But this is also a certain problem: if a person does not have goals and does not work, then what will he do? Imagine: you walk every day, for example, with your family or with a dog by the lake, you have time, today you have a break and so on. And here you go, and by this lake, the whole city, everyone came for a walk with the dog. What will you do? Therefore, one should not think that the introduction of these technologies will lead to the loss of jobs in the near future.”.

Dmitry Sholomitsky: Now we are talking about the implementation of these technologies in the real sector of the economy. This is actually an integral part of the process. AI helps a lot in certain aspects of business, reduces the time to make decisions, process document flow, incoming data streams and so on. That's not bad. This is exactly the narrow area that we are talking about: applying AI in a narrow sphere gives us all the “bumps”, all the benefits. Not general artificial intelligence, not superintelligence, but a specific task in a particular field. And this is a normal, integral process for our production today, because it makes goods cheaper, and we become competitive. But this does not mean that everyone will lose jobs tomorrow, including thanks to the socially oriented policy pursued by our state and public organizations such as the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus.

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