For Munchy Su, opening up his own restaurant is a dream come true.
“I started in 1991, right after high school — and I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid,” said Su.
Munchy’s Pizza is a family-owned mom-and-pop shop in Deerfield Beach that’s known for its creative, over-the-top pizza and wing creations.
Last month, the shop reached tens of thousands of people through social media posts, claiming it would not use artificial intelligence (AI).
The TikTok post has more than 25,000 likes and has nearly 110,000 views, with many people commenting about the shop’s take on AI.
Su says a few years ago, Munchy’s original Instagram page, with more than 30,000 followers, was hacked by an AI profile.
“We spent thousands and thousands of dollars promoting the account. We tried to get in contact with Meta for three months. Every time they would answer, it was AI. No human ever got back to us,” said Su.
Su believes AI jeopardizes jobs, and many people online agree with him. But one local business expert says the contrary.
“At the macro level, we expect more jobs to be created by AI,” said Paul Pavlou, Dean of the University of Miami Business School.
Pavlou says industries like finance, the medical field, and hospitality won’t see as great an impact with AI taking over jobs.
“Hospitality is probably one of the largest workforces that will probably not be affected tremendously by AI; at least in the foreseeable future, those are more manual jobs, so you need human beings to provide services. My prediction is that we probably won’t see major changes in the industries in Miami, but likely more jobs that will be created,” he said.
Pavlou says two major concerns with AI are the potential for systems to go rogue and for bad actors to utilize AI.
Ultimately, Pavlou says AI will become integrated into our everyday lives.
“I feel like I will never, as long as I’m alive, have a computer take over a human being’s job,” said Su.
According to the World Economic Forum, globally, there have been 1.3 million jobs created through AI integration. The consulting firm McKinsey & Company reports that an estimated 11 million people will need to switch occupations by 2035 due to AI.
Dining and Cooking