Inflection
- Mustafa Suleyman said the issue of AI replacing workers is an "open question" in the long term.
- The Google DeepMind cofounder said AI is a "fundamentally labor-replacing" tool in a CNBC interview.
- Since ChatGPT launched in 2022, there has been growing concern about AI technology.
Google DeepMind's cofounder Mustafa Suleyman said AI is an "incredible technology" but that it is a "fundamentally labor-replacing" tool in the long-term, in an interview with CNBC's Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
Suleyman, who left Google in 2022 and is now cofounder and CEO of Inflection AI, discussed the future of the technology, how it adds value to businesses, and touched on the fear around AI replacing workers.
"I think in the long-term — over many decades — we have to think very hard about how we integrate these tools, because left completely to the market and to their own devices, these are fundamentally labor-replacing tools," he said in the interview.
"They will augment us and make us smarter and more productive, for the next couple decades, but in the longer term that's an open question," he added.
Suleyman, whose company developed an AI chatbot that offers advice and support to users, explained that AI is beneficial in two ways. First, businesses save costs because it makes existing processes "massively more efficient."
"Secondly, they allow us to do new things that software has never been able to do before. These tools are creative, they're empathetic, and they actually act much more like humans than a traditional relational database where you only get out what you put in," he said.
Business Insider contacted Inflection AI for further comment but did not immediately hear back.
Since OpenAI's ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, there's been a wave of hype around AI technology in the past year, raising concerns about how it will affect humans.
Some workers are concerned that AI will make their jobs obsolete because it can perform tasks like writing and coding.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Stanford University professor Erik Brynjolfsson said that companies who use AI to replace workers are on the losing team.
He said that savvy companies will use it to "complement workers" because some tasks are better performed by humans and others by machines.