Too expensive to replace humans with AI for now, says MIT study

The MIT study found that most of the time, it would be cheaper for companies to continue to use human workers for some specific tasks rather than using AI.

Moneycontrol News

February 08, 2024 / 18:14 IST

The study researched the requirements and characteristics an AI tool would need to complete a job at the level a human could. (Image credit: Tesla Optimus/X)

Amid the multitude of companies that have reported layoffs in the last two years, a number of them did so to bring in automation with artificial intelligence (AI). While this has spread fears of humans being replaced by AI in jobs, a recent study found that it's unlikely to happen as soon as we think.

That’s because it may be too expensive for companies to replace human workers with AI, the study carried out by MIT CSAIL, MIT Sloan, The Productivity Institute, and IBM’s Institute for Business Value found.

The study researched the requirements and characteristics an AI tool would need to complete a job at the level a human could and if the company could afford the AI model as opposed to a human employee. It found that the majority of the time, it would be cheaper for firms to continue to use human workers for some specific tasks rather than using AI.

“Our study on automation with AI computer vision systems does deliver some encouraging news about job replacement, showing that many tasks wouldn’t be economically attractive to automate for years or even decades,” Neil Thompson, principal investigator at MIT CSAIL and the Initiative on the Digital Economy, told CNBC Make It.

Using a small bakery as an example, the study said that theoretically, the bakery could save around $14,000 in labour costs by having an AI tool monitor the freshness of the ingredients instead of a human baker. It, however, makes it more financially viable to have bakers do the task as the cost of developing and training an AI model would outweigh the potential savings.