Google DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg lays down ‘laptop rule’ to spot if AI can replace your job

Google DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg has warned about the changes that AI may bring to the workforce. The top AI leader outlined a new ‘rule of thumb’ to identify if the job you are doing could be easily replicated by an AI or not.

In an interaction with Professor Hannah Fry, Legg laid down the ‘Laptop Rule’ where he noted that if a job can be performed entirely using a screen, keyboard, camera, speaker, microphone and mouse, it is cognitive and therefore replicable by AI.

"If you can do the job remotely over the internet just using a laptop... then it's probably very much cognitive work," Legg noted. "If you're in that category, I think that advanced AI will be able to operate in that base to some extent."

However, Legg also noted that there is a ‘human aspect’ to some of this cognitive work that can protect these jobs. He took the example of influencers whose job can be done completely remotely but since they possess a particular personality it protects them from AI taking over their job.

When prompted by the interviewer that his assessment would mean that AI could end up threatening a lot of jobs in the society, Legg said, “We need people who study all these different aspects of society to take Agi seriously.”

"And my impression is that a lot of these people are not." he added

“I think there's an enormous opportunity here. But just like any revolution, like the industrial revolution or anything, it's complicated. It has all kinds of effects on society in all kinds of ways. And to get the benefits of that and minimize the risks and the costs of that, we need to navigate this carefully. And at the moment I think nowhere near enough people are thinking about what AGI means for this particular thing and we need a lot more people doing that.” he further noted

When will AGI be reached?

Legg also stuck to his long standing prediction that there is 50:50 chance that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be reached by 2028. However, he did confirm to the interviewer that it would be ‘minimal AGI’ and the full AGI is still some years away but could be achieved within a decade.

In case you aren't aware, AGI is believed to be a hypothetical state in the development of the AI systems where they achieve intelligence similar to humans in most if not all tasks. There is no one acceptable definition on the topic in the world of AI. Similarly there is no specified timeline on when AGI will be achieved either, some like Elon Musk and Legg have claimed that it is single digit years away while others like former Meta Chief scientist Yann lecun have warned that scaling large language models (LLMs) will never lead to AGI.

However, there is a growing belief in the AI world that once AGI is achieved it could fundamentally alter the workforce for good, some like Musk believe it could usher in an era of "universal high income" while others are not so optimistic.