AI is Already Upending the Job Market

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👀 Today’s Thing: AI is Already Upending the Job Market

🤖 AI isn’t the first technology to disrupt economies and change the way humans approach work, life, and education. Generative AI isn’t even the first application of artificial intelligence to do that — factory workers have been dealing with the threat of robots taking their jobs for some time now. But Gen AI is already disrupting the world’s knowledge economy, starting with the most easily automated writing tasks.

🎧 Want to go deeper? Check out my podcast episode with Kai-Fu Lee, in which the iconic AI figure talks about the future of the labor market, and possibilities for an AI-powered age of abundance.

📖 Backstory

☞ IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the coming years. These non-customer-facing roles in departments like HR amount to roughly 26,000 workers, Krishna said. “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.” Quick math says that’s roughly 7,800 salaries no longer to be paid out.

☞ Big tech isn’t the only industry facing AI-fueled upheaval. A company called OpenFortune has invested in ChatGPT to create fortune cookie messages. The company’s CEO said the move comes in response to consumer demand for, “new, refreshed, unique fortunes.”

☞ The news comes amidst a long flurry of layoffs in the tech sector, and a dearth of Help Wanted ads more broadly. The latest federal numbers show the number of open jobs in the United States has dropped to its lowest level in two years.

🔑 Keys to Understanding

🥇 AI believers say the technology, if used properly, will usher in an age of abundance in which automated systems will provide us with necessities, leaving more time for altruistic and leisurely pursuits.

🥈 Economists, however, fear massive job losses and widening inequality as societies transition. “History suggests profound technological change presents significant challenges for policymakers. Each of the three previous industrial revolutions had a similar initial impact: it hollowed out jobs across the economy, it led to an increase in inequality and to a decline in the share of income going to labour.” - The Guardian 

🥉 The near-term math is simple, if anxiety-making for knowledge workers and the creative class: A dramatic rise in the power of Generative AI (times) Corporate belt-tightening under economic uncertainty (equals) AI replacing humans on the cheap. The big question is whether this trend will last, or give way to a new wave of jobs that pay humans well to work in tandem with AI tools.

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Until the next thing,

- Noah

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