IMF Director And Unbabel CEO Say AI May Replace Humans As Fight Against Exploitative AI Continues

The world hasn’t been the same since the introduction of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

In November 2022, OpenAI launched its ChatGPT and witnessed over a million users in under 5 days. Since then, the sector has filled up with numerous companies bringing in their own unique approaches and capabilities.

Moreover, the GenAI boom has acted as a catalyst for the overall artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as businesses are looking to integrate the technology into their products, services and platforms.

At this point, the terms AI and GenAI are no longer restricted to technology companies. They’ve infiltrated every possible electronic device out there. Even products that weren’t typically electronic are seeing a digital transformation just to incorporate AI technology.

In the midst of all these positives, the world is battling a major concern—will AI take people's jobs?

While the debate has seen experts give mixed reactions, many employees have been laid off over the last year and some industry leaders are warning that more are yet to come, especially at the time of crisis.

According to IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) First Deputy Managing Director, Gita Gopinath, this shift will come when the next recession strikes, which could be in the form of mass layoffs.

“You see it when the recession strikes. That’s when you really see the effect of automation on the labor market,” said Gopinath during an onstage interview at the Fortune Global Forum in New York.

“When you have good times, and companies are making lots of profits, they hold on to workers. They’re investing in the technology [AI], but they’re holding on to workers.” 

On the other hand, some companies are leveraging AI technology to replace human processes.

Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Unbabel CEO Vasco Pedro revealed a translation service powered by AI called Widn.AI, while proclaiming that humans would not be needed for translations at all in three years.

Currently, the platform enables translations in 32 languages and will not require humans to work.

“When we started in Unbabel 10 years ago, AI was not at the stage that it is now, and so we were very much focused on creating hybrid solutions that would combine AI and human,” said Pedro.

“But I think for the first time, we believe that translation is now fully in the realm of AI capabilities, and that you can do a lot of things without needing humans at all in the case of translation.”

Pedro went on to mention that humans will still be required in some capacity, saying, “There’s still going to be humans responsible for making sure that things get translated and are delivered in the right places.”


However, it may not be all doom and gloom when it comes to AI interfering with human processes. Tools such as Glaze and Nightshade are helping millions of human artists, according to a report by MIT Technology Review.

Developed by Zhao and the University of Chicago’s SAND Lab (Security, Algorithms, Networking and Data).

Both these tools work in a similar way—they add “barely perceptible” perturbations to an image’s pixels so that AI scrapers can’t read them properly.

While Glaze utilizes a cloaking mechanism that thwarts AI algorithms from training on and copying an artist’s style, Nightshade adds a layer of poison to images, which breaks AI models.

So far Glaze has been downloaded over 6 million times, while Nightshade has seen over 1.6 million users.

Praising the tools, Karla Ortiz, a prominent digital artist, said, “I’m able to post my work online, and that’s pretty huge.”

Do you think AI will replace humans if a recession were to strike? Do you think global governments should consider making moves to strengthen employment security and stability to prevent harmful effects in that case?

Let us know in the comments below!