AI and Employment – Making Life Easy or Making Life Hell?
The AI corporations say that we have nothing to fear from AI and robots. Jobs for humans won’t disappear, they’ll simply change as they did in previous industrial revolutions.
They say millions of jobs will be created in AI-related design, programming and management, while the AI automation of routine work will mean humans get more leisure time.
But there is another view that AI will lead to mass unemployment and humans will be reduced to applying for a discretionary Universal Basic Income in order to live.
So which is it? While there is scant evidence to support the claims that AI will generate millions of jobs, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest this is definitely not the case.
I want to draw your attention to two recent BBC presentations on AI. In the first a BBC Bitesize presenter preaches the wonders of the AI industry, how it’s just another 'industrial revolution' that we need to re-skill for. Of important note to me was the speaker's recommendation that 're-skilling' is best achieved by studying maths or computer science at university.
In the second presentation, BBC Question Time, a NEET (one of the million-plus young people ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’) is invited to speak about his experience. He graduated in computer science, the very cradle of AI creation, but despite 150 job applications, this young man remains jobless; it seems AI has taken the job he spent 3 years training for. And it’s not just him.
There are thousands of similar graduates who chose the computer science path because of a guaranteed job at the end of it, only to find they have been rendered redundant by AI. So what chance do the rest of us stand if these guys can't get a job? Us who used to work in call centres, accountants, insurance, finance and checkouts? Call it what you want – job reshaping, redeployment, AI augmentation; all of these, in fact, amount to job losses.
The AI industrial revolution is like none in the past, where machines were created to increase human productivity. No, AI will replace humans. Which jobs will go first? Accountants, lawyers and administrators are hot on the heels of the call centre workers who are already seeing massive job losses as AI replaces them. Which jobs are the most secure from AI replacement? Either read the next Two Cides blog or email us with your job description, and we'll tell you how long you have got.
Research by Paul Hayward
