OCG President

AI “will affect some professional groups”

According to OCG President Mück, AI will have an impact on the labor market in five to ten years.

(Bild: KI-generiert - remake - stock.adobe.com)

Programs such as ChatGPT, which can independently create texts, images and now even videos, are increasingly finding their way into companies. So far, none of them have laid off employees as a result, says Thomas Mück, President of the Austrian Computer Society (OGC). "But in the five to ten-year horizon, it will of course affect some professional groups," he says.

On the one hand, the boom in AI could partially compensate for the baby boomers leaving the labor market, but at the same time it will make it more difficult for young people to enter the workforce, especially in areas such as the creative industries.

According to a conservative estimate, the programs that currently run under generative artificial intelligence, i.e. create new content, could save around 1.5 hours of net time in a 40-hour week, estimates Mück. Although the first drafts of the programs cannot be used without human control and revision, they are faster "than starting from scratch".

Competitive advantage through AI
So anyone who can use AI has a competitive advantage, emphasizes Mück, who was head of the Institute for Computer Science and Business Informatics at the University of Vienna until 2001 and has been running the non-profit association "Österreichische Computergesellschaft" OCG for almost a year alongside his day job as Deputy Director General of the Austrian Accident Insurance Fund (AUVA). Its 1200 members include IT companies, ministries, research and educational institutes. The aim is to "promote IT and communication technology".

The fact that generative AI is available free of charge for private individuals and at low cost for companies has contributed to its current triumph. However, Mück assumes that this will soon be a thing of the past or will only apply to basic models. It's like current accounts, which were initially provided free of charge by the banks, but "since you can no longer exist properly without a current account, they are no longer free".

Thomas Mück is President of the Austrian Computer Society.

(Bild: ocg.at)

Europe is in danger of losing touch
AI models have to be trained with enormous amounts of data and very high computing power. The more data is fed in, the better the models become - and the more they are used, the greater their lead. Only a few large companies have the necessary resources for this. The German AI Association already warned in a 2021 analysis that monopolies or oligopolies could emerge for AI models - and that Europe is not yet at the forefront.

Amazon has now invested four billion dollars in the AI start-up Anthropic, Microsoft has invested ten billion dollars in OpenAI and has announced AI investments of around three billion euros in the UK and Germany. Google (Bard) and Facebook, as well as Chinese tech giant Baidu, are also investing billions in this area.

Europe cannot keep up financially. Mück mentions two European models as relevant. The French Mistral AI, which has raised around half a billion euros in funding to date, and Trust LLM at Linköping University in Sweden, which has been financed primarily with European research funds to date. The German AI company Aleph Alpha is also financed with around half a billion euros.

According to a survey, most people see AI as a threat to democracy and the workplace.

(Bild: Statista 2023)

Implementation in practice is not working
Science can no longer keep up financially. Europe would be a leader in AI research, but putting it into practice is not working, says Mück. The majority of market-ready AI models currently in use are offered by US companies, while the enormous computing power required is concentrated in Asia, especially India and China. Europe is in danger of being left behind, as has already happened with electric cars and photovoltaics. In the end, only a few AI models will remain worldwide, Mück expects.

As a result of digitalization, there are an extremely large number of people for whom their own present is becoming alien, who can no longer orient themselves.

Thomas Mück

"Basic fear" of digitalization
However, Mück has no data protection concerns. Data protection is important and would be manageable from a factual point of view, but is repeatedly "instrumentalized as a cudgel" when lobby groups want to bring projects down: "If I don't think something is politically opportune in the broadest sense, the easiest thing to do in Europe is to come up with data protection," complains Mück. The strict laws in Austria and Europe are also not the reason why projects fail on this issue, but rather interest groups that use the issue to bring down things they find unpleasant. Of course, this could also happen with AI, he admits.

On the other hand, it is clear that in Europe we have to deal with people's "basic fear" of being overrun by IT. "As a result of digitalization, there are an extremely large number of people for whom their own present is becoming alien, who can no longer find their bearings." This needs to be taken into account.

Mück therefore also welcomes the recent regulation of AI at EU level, the "AI Act". This regulates AI models to varying degrees depending on the "risk" to people. However, "I wouldn't bet on whether the AI Act is the last word in wisdom". After all, developments are moving too fast for legislators to keep up. The drafting of the rules of the game was "not ideal, but that doesn't matter, it's a good attempt", says Mück. To a certain extent, EU regulation is symbolic policy, but it is important to signal to people: "We don't want to be passengers". He does not fear competitive disadvantages as a result of the regulation.

Enormous computing power instead of elegant algorithms
Not everyone is aware that modern AI models map a "neural network" and ultimately only estimate the probability of certain word sequences - factual truth or accuracy are not a criterion. The AI can therefore also "hallucinate", i.e. invent new facts. Mück makes no secret of the fact that he would prefer an AI that is based on logical-mathematical laws. However, this approach has not prevailed.

"The sentimental favorite, as is so often the case, didn't really get us anywhere". Rule-based algorithms were probably not "the right form of representation", or only for very limited applications. The neural network, on the other hand, which has nothing to do with formal logic, has "worked in practice", even if we don't always know exactly why. Mück admits that "from the outside, it is certainly comparable to human thinking". In reality, however, it is not "elegant algorithms" that represent intelligence, but "only the enormous computing power", i.e. "brute force".