Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) take your job?
On the surface the threat is real. However, when you take a moment to think about it
some things don't seem to add up. The general way most people think about is that they
look at the capabilities of AI and some of its implementations in relation to their
job or industry. This leaves some people feeling secure about their career prospects
if AI doesn’t seem like a big enough threat. The rest are sweating profusely and having sleepless nights.
Here are 7 reasons why you probably don’t need to worry as much:
The human element of a job
While AI is a very powerful tool, a lot of jobs have some nuance or aspect that probably requires a human touch. If a company decides to replace a person from a job role they also have to consider is AI can take care of every aspect of that job and passing the human aspect of the job to those who remain. What exactly is the human element of a job? It’s probably those duties and roles that are very difficult or costly to automate and also jobs that are difficult to completely entrust to a machine. Here are some basic examples:
- Teaching material is widely and publicly available. AI can’t take care of other aspects of the teaching profession like tending to the individual needs of students, setting tests and assignments, marking, coaching sports, student evaluation, offering career guidance to students etc.
- AI is now very good at programming. However, software development goes far beyond just writing code. The software development life cycle goes something like this: Planning, Requirements Analysis, Design, Coding, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance. Many of those stages require human interaction, research, interpretation etc. and can’t simply be automated.
- No matter how much data is utilized and how useful it is, some careers such as sports are very difficult to automate. E.g. good teams or players do lose despite the odds being in their favor, there is a lot of interpretation required in jobs such as refereeing, and some things are somewhat not tangible and therefore cannot be accounted for using data and machines (e.g. sprit, flare, emotion, crowd, and clutch moments).
- Lastly, what constitutes a ‘good’ beat or song? How do you automate such things?
Economic effect of mass unemployment
If AI does in fact take our jobs, how many jobs would it likely take? Estimates vary with some being as high as 40% of jobs globally by as early as the mid-2030s. Think about what this means for economics and taxes. I don’t foresee any government allowing its economy being affected to that extent. Our politicians and tax collectors are too greedy to allow that. On a serious note though, higher unemployment figures mean less economic activity because, you know, no money to spend by a higher percentage of the population. Imagine 40% of the current jobs in your city or country disappearing. Which businesses will be affected? The same companies that replaced you could very likely go out of business due to significantly reduced sales. The same bosses that replaced you may themselves be replaced or their businesses go broke. The nature of capitalism would not allow that level of economic collapse. Governments would probably step in and regulate AI way before more that 10% of jobs are lost. The other alternative would be a new approach to economics and life style such as a universal basic income as stated by Elon Musk. I’m personally routing for a dystopian future where the machines do all the work and we get to spend all our lives doing things I am unwilling to state in this article .
Creative work & Innovation
Arguably the greatest weakness of artificial intelligence is the ability to CREATE. AI bases its output on existing works. Creatives and innovators are not likely to be greatly affected by AI. What would happen if every musician asks an AI to generate the best, chart topping, award winning song, or beat, or lyrics? AI probably cannot effectively interpret such subjective requests. Another way to think of innovation is ‘problem solving’. To what extent can Artificial intelligence truly innovate or problem solve especially where a new solution is required? If we fed an AI with all the medical data we have, would it be able to start finding the cure for cancer or making new breakthrough discoveries?
Trust
An unspoken truth about these AI tools, such as chatgpt and Gemini, is that some companies are not in a position to simply entrust their data to an AI owned and operated by some other entity. I don’t see Apple using chatgpt or Google’s Gemini to handle their data, designs, financial data etc. As stated earlier, AI generally utilizes existing data to generate responses to queries. There is a side of AI where they may low key be infringing on copyright laws. To those businesses who have not thought about it, are you sure it’s safe to replace people from your company and entrust your business’ operations, plans, financial data etc. to some AI owned by some other company? Are we sure AI won’t turn out to be the greatest spy and intellectual property thief of all time? People in your company may also be difficult to trust at times, so choose your poison wisely.
AI may be a passing phase
Tech has had a habit of disrupting so many aspects of our lives and has unfortunately also gotten good at making a lot of ‘noise’ when something new is being introduced. The tech industry also evolves very quickly and thing come and go. AI could very easily be over hyped. We could be out here panicking about our jobs and incomes when AI could end up just being another tool we use at work. At best it may simply affect HOW we work without really replacing people as such. A good example of something similar is how we grew up being taught at school that the future will be paperless because of computers. The paper industry is still alive and well. In fact the only place I don’t see paper regularly is in my pockets . Ipods came and went. Crypto was expected to completely disrupt banking but banks are still standing strong. Online shopping was expected to disrupt real estate but people still go to physical stores. Online shopping and physical stores seems to be existing quite harmoniously. AI may be a passing phase. Only time will tell.
New opportunities
One of the most exciting things about AI is that it is expected to affect how we work. This is expected to create new opportunities and jobs. While it’s not very clear what this will look like, we may only need to adjust our careers through learning new skills. AI may affect your current career but may open up new and better opportunities. For examples, programmers are said to be in danger of losing their jobs to AI, however it is the same skillsets that are fundamental to the creation of AI. Remember the example of companies not trusting the current AI tools? This could be expanded to countries and governments as well. We could see more companies and government creating and operating their own AI systems. That could be more jobs than ever before for the same software developers. Hang in there my fellow coders.
Overhyped New Tech
The last, and probably the silliest, reason you may not lose your job to AI is that AI is a product, and its creators are just hyping it to ensure they make their money. It is a powerful tool, with massive income potential. We do live in a capitalist world after all. For the creators of these AI systems, hyping its ability to replace jobs could be their way of selling it. One of the things that stands out about how AI is being hyped is how they are touting it as being able to affect almost every aspect of our lives going forward. While it has the potential to do so, the way it’s hyped sounds like it’s backed by some clever marketing.
In conclusion, just be prepared to learn new skills just in case. Also try to keep reasonably fit just in case we have a terminator situation in the future.