24 Feb AI fears: 48% of employees in Saudi Arabia fear AI will cost jobs
Nearly half (48%) of employees in Saudi Arabia fear losing their jobs to artificial intelligence – yet despite this, the majority (52%) are happy for AI applications to do the dangerous parts of their role.
The research comes from Kaspersky, who found that many employees recognised the benefits AI can bring – for example, freeing them from physically demanding or dangerous jobs (52%); increasing the efficiency of production processes (50%); and allowing for more opportunities for employees to retrain for better paid and more interesting positions (51%).
Emad Haffar, Head of Technical Experts at Kaspersky, said: “While some individuals and and organisations are wary of automatisation and refrain from using it, others adapt their processes to get the most benefits from the newest technologies. As further business digitisation is inevitable, companies around the world need to explore how to make automated solutions more secure and efficient for business needs.”
While close to half of those surveyed said they worried they would end up losing their jobs to automation, around one in four (23%) reported they had heard of cybersecurity incidents with robots or automated systems in their company.
AI has become a hot topic of late – earlier this month we revealed that France has plans to fast track AI legislation to secure the 2024 Paris Olympics with artificial intelligence-powered video surveillance.