Maria Bartiromo has been covering business news for 30 years, and she’s got her eye on the next big wave: artificial intelligence.
The Fox Business News anchor, who recently re-signed with the network for a multiyear deal, is releasing an hour-long investigative documentary about artificial intelligence. The segment, which has been in the works for a year now, includes interviews with chief executive officers of major companies including IBM IBM, +0.16% and Ford. F, +0.99%. Fox News parent 21st Century FOX, -0.06% and MarketWatch parent News Corp. NWS, -0.80% share common ownership.
Artificial intelligence isn’t just making demands to Siri on Apple’s iPhones, AAPL, +0.45% or telling your Google GOOG, +0.03% email inbox to identify spam. Eventually, people will be talking about artificial general intelligence, which is machine learning — that is, the computer deciding on its own what is or isn’t relevant to a person’s request based on its past experiences. This technology has the potential to create entirely new jobs, eliminate other ones and also save lives, Bartiromo said, and the key for Americans to succeed in the face of this new technology is to understand where and how it will be implemented.
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The documentary will air on Sunday at 8 p.m. EST on Fox News FOX, -0.06%, and is broken into six parts. Bartiromo spoke with MarketWatch about how artificial intelligence will affect future workers and retirement, as well as her own plans.
MarketWatch: What do you see as the biggest impact of artificial intelligence on businesses? Is there a certain sector or facet of the workplace that will be most affected?
Maria Bartiromo: Artificial intelligence is powered by data so any job that involves a lot of data will be impacted first. So let’s say you’re a mortgage broker, or the person who looks at the eligibility of someone to see if they’re going to get a mortgage. You have to go through large sets of data, which a machine can do fast.
I think the industry that will be most impacted, in a good way, is health care. The machine can look at a radiology report, a mammogram, an MRI — it can look at a million eyes and understand which one of those eyes is diseased. Or a million skins and see really simply, easily and quickly what the specifics of that skin is and what the propensity is for it to have cancerous cells. That’s what IBM’s Watson is doing in hospitals — they’re using AI in very big ways to understand routines and what these reports might show. It won’t replace a doctor, but it will just be able to let the doctor do more. When you go to a doctor and you say you have a headache or stomach ache, the first thing the doctor does is eliminate things. That takes time. A computer can do that very quickly. I think it will be lifesaving.
But while it can be lifesaving, it can also be job killing in other industries. I think when you look at those industries, that’s when the worry comes in and really sparks a debate in business about how to unleash artificial intelligence in an ethical way.
MW: People seem to think AI will replace older workers. What do you think?
Bartiromo: Not necessarily. It is really about a person’s savvy with technology. You can be an older person and be really good at technology, you don’t have to be a young person to understand how technology impacts things. So it’s really about how savvy you are with these changes and how to keep up with this skill set, or you need to be trained. We have seen technology replace jobs our entire careers. We didn’t know what jobs would be available in 1998 with the dot-com boom. I remember covering this with a front-row seat in the 1990s when Amazon AMZN, -0.04% went public. We didn’t know what the technology meant, that drones might replace delivery people or shopping was going to move online as opposed to brick and mortar. There will be jobs, but the scary thing is we don’t know about them yet. It is not targeted toward older people but it is targeted toward white collar.
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MW: Will AI impact retirement, and if so, how?
Bartiromo: Work is shifting. I don’t know how many people you know who retire at 65 and say “all right, I’m going to go hit the hammock.” I am certainly not going to do that. People may retire but they just retire from a job they had for 30 years and then they’ll do something else. I am a firm believer of “never retire” and the reason I say that is because you have to constantly keep your mind going and have to constantly challenge your mind because if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.
MW: What does retirement mean to you? What do you envision retirement even being for yourself?
Bartiromo: I don’t know because I’m nowhere near it. I know in my frame of mind right now, I’m not going to go hit the hammock. I am a curious person. I love work, I love learning new things and I have an open mind to new ideas. So I doubt when I am faced with that prospect that I’m just going to stop working. I’m going to do something to enrich my mind. I have no expectations that when I retire from my job I’m going to rest and relax. It’s just not who I am.
MW: What advice do you have for someone starting to work, especially if there will be more technological advancements in the workplace?
Bartiromo: I would say don’t write this off. Understand what you don’t know and make sure to bone up on technology if you are in an industry that is data-heavy. Make sure you understand that in the future, machines will be able to handle that so arm yourself with the right training to thrive in the profession. It’s really important not to say “I don’t get that,” “I’m lame when it comes to technology” — that’s a cop out and it will hurt you in the future. Make sure to improve on the skills you need regarding technology and make sure you know the systems.
MW: What would you say are some of the biggest misconceptions of AI in the workplace?
Bartiromo: One misconception is that you have to be afraid of it. You have people like Elon Musk (the chief executive officer of Tesla TSLA, -0.71% ) who say it is dangerous but the reality is it is happening. Technology has always impacted jobs. Don’t be afraid of it, understand it and try to educate yourself. Understand what parts of your routine are vulnerable to being replaced.
Another misconception is that when we talk about AI we are talking about Siri and your phone or the Echo home device. Yeah, that is artificial intelligence, but it is more about machine learning, so when I say “Siri, put on yoga music,” and it learns what yoga music is, that is machine learning. When you talk about artificial general intelligence, where the computer is mimicking the brain to a tee — that could be changing the way you live and work.
MW: In your career reporting on business news, how have you seen the emergence of AI reported? How have people been talking about it and how has the perception of AI changed in those years?
Bartiromo: I have been covering business news for 30 years. I have had a front-row seat and seen many cycles and many different innovations. When I first got into business in 1989 at CNN, we were in the middle of the individual investor revolution, where individuals were hungry for information and wanted to arm themselves with information because they thought they could make their own investment decisions. So what happened then — we had a whole industry swarmed and discount brokerage firms like E*Trade, ETFC, +0.51% Ameritrade (now TD Ameritrade) AMTD, +0.54% and Schwab SCHW, +0.93% of course thrived in that. Information was people’s currently and that was the power for them to get ahead in their lives.
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From there, we saw the cycle and euphoria of the dot-com boom, so people were investing in things with a .com at the end of it because why? I don’t know why. There were no revenue or earnings but the stock was trading at an enormous valuation. It was just mania where we thought we were on the doorstep of a new revolution.
Back then, a lot of companies said they didn’t have a dot-com site and they didn’t need to compete with Amazon. We know now you did need to compete with Amazon because if you weren’t online, you took a back seat. We are seeing companies look at AI and start adopting it slowly. We will see companies adopt it in a huge way because they’re going to realize they have to do this to be competitive. The first adopters will be enterprise, so companies, not the consumer, and it will be in your jobs.