Leave, Without Pay
For several years now, I have been writing about the impending impact of AI on the jobs market, though most people don't take this very seriously, as they think that we will just reskill and pivot to do other things, as new jobs and markets will be created. It is true they will, but unlikely at the rate needed to replace what was taken over by automation.
Morgan Stanley recently released a report how it sees the impact of AI on the jobs market over the next decade and it isn't pretty reading, for a whole host of current, full-time roles. For instance, Office and Administration could see a 46% decline in jobs. There are about 2.8 million of those types of jobs in the US at the moment and about 400K in Australia.
Yet, there are other factors to consider other than the total numbers, because for instance, in that particular field, 80% of the workforce is made up of women. That means that if about 1.5 of the 3 million lose their job, that will be 1.2 million women in the workforce. In the next category of Legal, it is largely the same, where 82% of all legal assistants are women.
If you go down that list, actually quite a few of those industries are dominated by women. But, automation isn't about oppressing women, it is about empowering profits.
While the eyes might be drawn to the various jobs on the left hand side of the chart, the most telling aspect is in the info box on the right, where they expect a +7% annual growth in GDP as a result of AI-driven productivity. The asterisk is, "once about half the businesses have adopted generative AI"
What does 7% a year mean?
That is a doubling in GDP in a decade.
What is a simple definition of GDP?
GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services—that is, those that are bought by the final user—produced in a country in a given period of time (say a quarter or a year). It counts all of the output generated within the borders of a country.
We here a lot about GDP, but it really is a pretty useless metric in many respects, because it looks at the total value, without looking at who or what is producing it. GDP can keep increasing, even automation is putting people out of work and unemployment is high. However, because robots don't pay tax, there is far more profit for the corporations that employee them and, far less income for governments to look after their citizens, who are increasingly finding themselves out of work.
As society functions through the lens of the financial economy, it is going to get even more misaligned in incentive between profiteering and human wellbeing. And this is why people should be very careful trusting all of those corporations and people saying that there is nothing to fear from AI, because they know the value of it for them. They have an agenda.
And a lot of skin in the game.
While the chart topped out at 46%, the average for all industries is actually 25%, which means in a country like the US with around 170 million workers, that is about 43 million workers that are expected to be heavily impacted by AI in their field of work, which is an enormous amount. And, like so many here keep saying, new jobs will be created, it is going to be interesting just who is going to have the right skills to take those kinds of jobs.
And remember, that these are the jobs directly affected, not the jobs that are going to be impacted from changes to these fields. For instance, we saw how much service businesses struggled during lockdowns and how even now, they are closing down, because people are working from home, rather than having lunch at the local café. This knock-on effect is going to impact tens of millions of other jobs in service sectors too, so even if those jobs can't be automated, the demand for their services go down, so they will need less staff also.
Society is set up using the economy as a structure of distribution of resources, under the assumption that people are working, that there is a trade of some kind of personal resource that adds to the value of society, in exchange for value. However, with automation, the same trade can be generated without people using their personal resources, but, why would they get anything in return, if they aren't adding value?
With fewer jobs on offer and increasing profits for businesses, it is likely that the competition for employees is going to be very demanding, as it is going to be an employer market. The level of skills required in order to get into some of the few positions is going to be intense, and this is going to flood down into every field and every position. This means that the requirements for what is considered relatively basic work now, is going to increase, as is the value of demonstratable skills.
A decade is not a very long time, but we don't even have that, because these changes have been happening for decades already. We haven't noticed the changes as we have been able to pivot a little over that time, but now the replacement speed is increasing and it is going to start having impacts on our daily lives.
Who knows, perhaps we will be able to automate everything and produce all we need, with benevolent leaders who distribute effectively so no one has to work and, everyone is supported to be the best version of themselves.
What do you think the chances of that are?
Taraz
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Judging by the leaders in my country, the chances of benevolence are slim to none, sadly. Even if it starts out as beneficial, it will soon be hijacked to provide as much profit as can be wrung out of our hides.
Yep. It is obviously not going to happen, even if it was technically possible.
Yo considero que la inteligencia artifical (IA) viene a complementar la tecnología que usa y construye el hombre. Alguna vez se pensó que un móvil era peligroso para la salud. Puede haber detractores, pero el tiempo tendrá la última palabra. Gracias por este post. Necesario e interesante.
I consider that artificial intelligence (AI) comes to complement the technology that man uses and builds. It was once thought that a mobile was dangerous to health. There may be detractors, but time will have the last word. Thanks for this post. necessary and interesting.
Look at the disconnection on society and the rising depression. you think mobiles are good for our health?
The technology is good for the man. contribute to your development.
Right from the Inception of AI I knew these was not going to be all good, I know scienyis all out to makeife better and easier but there are effect to all of this,
Imagine that number of people loosing their jobs , what will be their fate of survival, normally people earn some passive income frelancing, but now AI can just draft something on whatever you want, it's pretty had, that's why I keep telling people in as much as life is getting expensive by the day there is a need to constantly evolving being the best version of yourself by improving getting new skills adding up to your portfolio diversifying so that you don't get kicked in the ass in times like this ...
Thanks for reminding us were we all At.
I can literally hear the snark in your question from here...
While I understand that generative AI is getting better every day, I'm honestly not super confident it will honestly replace too many jobs. We may get a lot of companies laying people off siting AI productivity improvements, but generative AI is still too messy for use yet.
Lots of companies are banning it in the workplace because they don't trust where the data in the prompts goes. If you put company propriety data into the prompt, who will see that? From a legal standpoint, if you use generated images for the company's social media, and an artist can prove that its extremely close to their original image (that was part of the model the AI was trained on) then who might they sue? Your company? The AI tool company? It's all a little murky at the moment.
That all said, I'd definitely suggest people try to upskill themselves in areas that GAI can't replace, just in case.
This is only until a company is able to put its own AI into practice, meaning that it is internal only and they can firewall off data they don't want it to see. I know for a fact this is already happening.
While we focus on the generations we can see, it is all the administration work that is going to be the first to be impacted.
Yeah, Microsoft is pushing pretty hard to implement Walled Off large language models for each company that uses their general AI software. It's a great idea that I think will only get more and more popular as the costs come down.
Good point, I forgot about that alternative.
It’s crazy that legal is #2 on that list. The additional education requirement and professional nature to it will get completely disrupted by AI.
Most of legal is paperwork, not lawyering. There is already growing automation in this area, where juniors that do grunt work can be replaced by systems.
Thankfully, the jobs in the kitchen are still safe. Irony? I'd love to see a poster that says AI wants to put women back in the kitchen.
There are up sides.
If we can train AI to make a decision about dinner, we're good.
Little to none!
I suppose I'll have to dust off my French maid outfit - there will be plenty of mess to clean up when this starts popping off.
This is definitely one of the positives! ;D
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That kind of setup looks like it would collapse spectacularly after not very long.
It isn't aligned for a great community at least.
Things hyperfocused on a narrow set of people benefitting at the expense of everyone else tend not to be.
Mana ain't gonna grow out of benevolent leaders. Looking at the chart it might be a better idea to learn how to unclog a toilet from the release of so many constipated pompous asses.
Trade jobs like plumbing will be robust. I wonder what the new study requirement hurdles will be.
"Oh, Marion"
This is something I often consider as my kids are getting very close to college age 13,16. The older one wants to go into some social science major while my friends in the field all say, "Study business or computers." I think they are equally screwed. The younger one wants to go into a trade, but something that he can stay inside and not work "too hard" and not use his brain "too much" and not be working in a hospital.
A comment before I read through fully but... I'm pretty skeptical about that chart.
What was the criteria, who made the numbers? Experts in each field?
Just using my own background experience, I find it highly unlikely that Education could be effectively automated any more than parenting could. I'd argue education is one of the more robust careers against automation.
Any teacher will know that being a teacher involves a ton of human connection, relationship building, social adaptation, things that are inherently impossible to automate. In many cases a teacher spends more time with students than their own parents, and within that contains a huge responsibility in partially raising those kids with the right values, virtues and strengths (While also not impeding on the diverse range of parents' views).
I mean, you could technically get all the paperwork BS organized and out the way perhaps a bit more efficiently, but I don't consider that element 'education'.
'Library' though, sure. We had an entirely automated one in a previous school like 8 years ago. Nothing new there.
Education is driven by administration, not just classroom teaching. How many support staff are affected in the education system? This is generative AI, not just the practical classroom teaching. It is largely codified work.
So, while I agree that it might be a while before AI takes teaching jobs, there is a massive amount of "back office" work involved.
Yeah, I touched on that, but I just don't think that should count as 'education' but under 'admin', 'management', or the big 'administration' section at the top. If you lump the finance office into 'education' because they largely work with schools, then the creator of the chart needs to make clear that there is severe overlap between each category.
I mean, 'office and admin support' doesn't exist for the sake of existing. It's inherently attached to everything on that list. I dunno, just stinks of somebody arbitrarily making a chart based on what they think is probably about right.
I get the bigger point though anyway
I think it says that represented in that chart are 900 jobs. Not sure if there is more granularity in the read more report on the linked site
Well, you are right. Now, everyone will be on their toes because only the best ones are likely to get jobs and what about the others? It will be very tough for them. Isn't it?
I have noticed that the amount of efforts it takes for the jobs these days is lot more. And once AI takes over many mid aged people would be out of jobs, new people have no idea which field to enter into. And so everything would be chaotic. So AI introduced slowly into the society would be reasonable. If it comes out fast then corporate jobs would be hard to get. Very few opportunities from this point onwards.
This isn't new; automation in the form of robots and check out tills has been around for a long time and scared people, but at the same has been adopted and accepted by many.
The problem is that we are too many people and still think we can carry on as usual. There is a limit to everything, not just the planet's resources.
The law of accelerating returns by Raymond Kurzweil depicts this change. 50+ years of data support it.
I am on the optimistic side as I am aware of our tendency to focus on bad news.
I think at some point, robots and AI will replace a lot of the things we do. The accuracy of the bots will take some time to get better and I don't think the companies will refuse it. It helps them with the margins and I think it will force a lot more people to rely on the government.
If GDP increases while jobs are in turmoil, does this signal potential for a return to single-income households?
The chances are that AI assisted Robots would serve us in daily lives, clean shoes, do our office works,fill up the grocery and cook foods as the same way we would program them to function .
Robots. Robots and Robots would be everywhere and I wonder Mr. Stephen Hawkings theory of a Robot-Ruled World, where slowly replacing our jobs,services and control operations,they would replace our functions,limit our capacity/productivity,and go against us.
It means, disregarding the creators command,taking arms against the boss, threatening the human race and slowly implementing the theory of Ruling.
Too much AI is bad and I dont want to see doomsday very soon.
Do you ?
We need Universal Basic Income sooner than later, especially for the older people who are being replaced by technology. At a certain point, those companies do not need to extract more value as they can continue to operate with very little overhead due to AI. Profits should be capped and "extra profits" should go into a pool for redistribution in some form of UBI system. It may be a long shot to happen in these next 10 years, but it would go a long way to avoid the max pain society will feel if these UBI policies are not adopted.