The tidal wave of artificial intelligence (AI) barrelling toward many professions has generated deep anxiety among workers fearful that their jobs will be swept away — and the mental health impact is rising.

The launch in November 2022 of ChatGPT, the generative AI platform capable of handling complex tasks on command, marked a tech landmark as AI started to transform the workplace.

“Anything new and unknown is anxiety-producing,” Clare Gustavsson, a New York therapist whose patients have shared concerns about AI, told AFP.

“The technology is growing so fast, it is hard to gain sure footing.”

Legal assistants, programmers, accountants and financial advisors are among those professions feeling threatened by generative AI that can quickly create human-like prose, computer code, articles or expert insight.

Goldman Sachs analysts see generative AI impacting, if not eliminating, some 300 million jobs, according to a study published in March.

“I anticipate that my job will become obsolete within the next 10 years,” Eric, a bank teller, told AFP, declining to give his second name.

“I plan to change careers. The bank I work for is expanding AI research.”

Trying to ’embrace the unknown’

New York therapist Meris Powell told AFP of an entertainment professional worried about AI being used in film and television production — a threat to actors and screenwriters that is a flashpoint in strikes currently gripping Hollywood.

“It’s mainly people who are in creative fields who are at the forefront of that concern,” Gustavsson said.

AI is bringing with it a level of apprehension matched by climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, she contended.

But she said that she tries to get patients to “embrace the unknown” and find ways to use new technology to their advantage.

For one graphic animator in New York, the career-threatening shock came from seeing images generated by AI-infused software such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion that rivaled the quality of those created by humans.

“People started to realize that some of the skills they had developed and specialized in could possibly be replaced by AI,” she told AFP, adding she had honed her coding skills, but now feels even that has scant promise in an AI world.

“I’ll probably lean into more of a management-level role,” she said. “It’s just hard because there are a lot less of those positions.

“Before I would just pursue things that interested me and skills that I enjoy. Now I feel more inclined to think about what’s actually going to be useful and marketable in the future.”

Peter Vukovic, who has been chief technology officer at several startups, expects just one percent or less of the population to benefit from AI.

“For the rest, it’s a gray area,” Vukovic, who lives in Bosnia, said. “There is a lot of reason for 99 percent of people to be concerned.”

AI is focused on efficiency and making money, but it could be channeled to serve other purposes, Vukovic said.

“What’s the best way for us to use this?” he asked. “Is it really just to automate a bunch of jobs?”
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New Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals a record number of people are working multiple jobs as households try to keep up with the surge in the cost of living. Inflation has been at record highs, and Australians are paying some of the world’s highest power prices.

Sharp increases in power prices are making a cost-of-living crisis even worse. In some parts of the country, prices have risen by up to 25%.

Power prices in Australia have been fueled by various factors, including high inflation. There have also been expensive upgrades to aging transmission lines and distribution networks. Then there’s volatility in global energy markets caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In Sydney, Diana Olmos, a migrant from Colombia, told local media that rising costs have made electricity almost unaffordable.

“The power prices will increase by 20 to 25%,” Olmos said. “I cannot afford that. I don’t know how we are going to survive this time with a huge cost-of-living rise, the rise of energy bills and really extreme weather.”

Almost a million Australians — or about 7% of the workforce — have multiple jobs, according to official data released this week by the Bureau of Statistics.

Gary Mortimer, a professor of marketing and consumer behavior at the Queensland University of Technology, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that many people are struggling financially, while others are taking advantage of record low unemployment.

“The main reason … is that cost-of-living crisis and being forced to pick up a second job, or a side hustle, but there are other groups involved there, too,” Mortimer said. “I mean, there is obviously the group that are actually taking advantage of the fact that we have got 3.5% unemployment. There is lots of work available.”

Food prices in Australia have increased by more than 7% in the past year. The cost of insurance has soared. So have mortgages. The Reserve Bank has raised interest rates 12 times since May 2022 as it tries to tame inflation, which currently stands in Australia at 6%, the same as neighboring New Zealand. In the United States, inflation — the general increase in prices — is at 4%, its lowest level since 2021, a decline mainly driven by a fall in fuel prices.

Australia’s inflation is, however, below that of the United Kingdom, where inflation fell to 7.9% in June, down from 8.7% in May.
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President Joe Biden is expected to issue his long-awaited executive order to screen outbound investments in sensitive technologies to China early next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

The goal of the order is to prevent U.S. capital and expertise from accelerating the development of technologies that would support China’s military modernization and threaten U.S. national security.

The order is expected to target U.S. private equity, venture capital and joint venture investments in China in semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Most investments captured by the order will require that the government be notified about them. Some transactions will be prohibited, sources have said.

“It fills a gap in our current regime,” said Cordell Hull, a former U.S. Commerce Department official. “We have prohibitions on exporting the technology. We have restrictions on in-bound investment. This will help to plug that gap on funding and know-how and give the government visibility into these capital flows.”

The regulations are not expected to take effect right away, and the administration will solicit comments on its proposals, according to sources. It has already conducted meetings with stakeholders and has been consulting with allies. The topic also came up during U.S Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent trip to China.

Yellen last month described the potential restrictions as “highly targeted, and clearly directed, narrowly, at a few sectors where we have specific national security concerns.”

Laura Black, a former policy director for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews certain transactions in the United States, said the order was not expected to establish a “reverse CFIUS,” because it would not involve a case-by-case review in which a committee would clear, mitigate or block a transaction. However, it is expected to prohibit certain investments, she said.

Two sources said briefings were expected Monday, with the announcement Tuesday. But the timing has slipped many times before and could do so again.

Sources have told Reuters the investments that will be restricted are expected to track export control rules for China issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in October.

Emily Kilcrease, a former U.S. official who has worked on China investment policy, said the U.S. also has been trying to define what counts as artificial intelligence, and aiming to control offshore investments by U.S. people and companies.

She described the order as a major step in setting up a U.S. system of oversight to screen transactions to countries of concern and said that it was expected to expand in time.

She also said the United States should be prepared for retaliation by China.
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The regional economic forum APEC has begun hosting senior official and ministerial meetings in Seattle, Washington. This year, the United States will host the annual gathering as it navigates a range of complex topics and diplomatic challenges. Natasha Mozgovaya attended a ministerial on food security Thursday and has this report.
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Pakistan and China are marking a decade of economic cooperation with much fanfare these days as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, popularly known as CPEC, completes 10 years. Experts say while the mega-project helped Pakistan develop much-needed infrastructure, the less-than-generous loans from Beijing coupled with Islamabad’s mismanagement has kept the project from turning Pakistan’s economy around.

Estimated to be the largest partnership of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global investment and infrastructure project, CPEC launched in 2013 with more than $45 billion in planned investments. Over time, it grew to more than $62 billion, of which at least $25 billion was invested in Pakistan, according to both governments.

Mustafa Hyder Sayed, executive director of the Islamabad-based, nongovernmental Pakistan-China Institute, told VOA that the project came at a critical time for Pakistan.

“At that time, we had a lot of terrorism, there was a lot of turmoil and it [Pakistan] wasn’t seen as one of the best places to invest in, particularly,” he said. “And China reposed its trust in Pakistan at that time and dove right in. All in.”

Pakistani government data indicates CPEC has so far created 200,000 jobs, built more than 1,400 kilometers (897 miles) of highways and roads and added 8,000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid. The country’s deep-sea southwestern port of Gwadar, the centerpiece of CPEC, handled 600,000 tons of cargo in the last 18 months, according to officials.

At an event in Islamabad this week celebrating a decade of CPEC, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the project a game-changer.

“And this was the result of vision and commitment and friendship,” Sharif told an audience of Pakistani and Chinese dignitaries.

Visiting Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who received Pakistan’s highest civilian honor for his services in promoting economic cooperation, called the project exemplary.

“It has set an example of common trust and mutual development,” Lifeng said.

While Pakistan is among the top recipients of China’s infrastructure and energy investments, Islamabad now owes nearly one-third of its overwhelming external debt to Beijing.

Research shows that Chinese investments, largely shrouded in secrecy, do not come cheap. A 2021 report by U.S.-based research lab AidData found that most Chinese development financing in Pakistan between 2000 and 2017 were loans, not grants, given at or near commercial rates.

Pakistan-based economist Ammar Habib Khan, a nonresident senior fellow with the Washington-based Atlantic Council, told VOA this financial burden is partly why Pakistan has struggled to stimulate its economy through CPEC.

“A lot of that infrastructure came at a fairly high cost, and a lot of that borrowing was essentially in dollar terms and fairly higher than market terms,” he said. “Because of that, Pakistan continues to make significant dollar payments for the Chinese debt. Because of that we continue to have a current account crisis and some serious debt issues.”

In 2018, complaining of unfavorable terms, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government set out to review CPEC projects. By 2021, the government was promising to prioritize the projects, however, in a bid to revive cooling bilateral relations that observers believe stemmed from the Khan government’s unease with CPEC’s terms.

Economist Khan said Pakistan definitely has a debt problem but not a Chinese debt problem. He blamed Islamabad for mismanaging resources.

“We added a lot of generation capacity, but we did not make efficient the distribution channels, due to which whatever electricity is generated, a lot of it is wasted,” Khan said.

That wasted electricity is costing the government millions of dollars every year, and its debt to power plants built under CPEC is piling up.

Islamabad and Beijing reject Washington’s assertion that China’s development financing to Pakistan and other BRI recipients is a debt-trap.

Pakistan has plenty of say in CPEC projects, Sayed said, through the Joint Coordination Committee that includes Chinese and Pakistani officials.

“So, this perception of China coming in by predatory financing and weakening a host country and gaining political influence is unfounded,” he said.

A report last year by Taiwan-based anti-disinformation lab DoubleThink’s China in the World network placed Pakistan at the top of the list of countries most exposed to Chinese influence.

According to the AidData report, Chinese loan terms are less generous than what Western countries usually offer. Khan said a lack of Western funding for Pakistan left Islamabad with little choice.

“The choice was simply whether to have a power plant or whether to have 12 to 15 hours of electricity shutdown,” Khan said. “So, yes, CPEC did provide Pakistan with a base of necessary infrastructure required for industrial growth. Meanwhile, Western countries have not been able to provide the same over the last many years.”

Under the BRI, China is spending over eight times more in Pakistan than the United States is, according to AidData’s research. The U.S. spends on soft infrastructure in Pakistan such as education, governance, and law and order capacity building, while China spends on hard infrastructure there.

Pakistan is the biggest recipient of China’s energy investment in Asia, while its share of BRI’s transportation and storage projects is the highest in the world.

Along with being Pakistan’s biggest single creditor country, China also routinely rescues it from economic collapse. In the last few months, Beijing rolled over close to $8 billion in debt, according to the Pakistani government, preventing Islamabad from default.

Experts say that to lessen the debt burden stemming from CPEC, Pakistan must find ways to efficiently use the energy and infrastructure it acquired through the mega-project and strengthen domestic production and exports.
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