Even as we read about the first layoffs blamed at least in part on automation, there is still cause for optimism. While easily automated jobs may fall by the wayside, it's important to remember that new jobs managing and leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology are being created.
Titles like edge computing release manager, edge stream researcher and AI analytics executive did not exist until very recently. Earlier this year, I hired a vice president of AI and robotic process automation. How many of us thought even ten years ago that a role like this would be so central for business software development?
Once we combine AI with other transformational technologies, businesses will become more autonomous and productivity relative to the number of workers in the economy will increase. This is fantastic. It's the promised land envisioned by business software technologists for decades. But we face the same problem posed in science fiction stories: Do we have ethical and legislative systems to deal with this increase in productivity and changes to the way humans contribute to society? Businesses and governments must begin now in earnest to prepare for an economy where fewer people will be needed to run businesses and meet human needs.
Will AI replace jobs, or just types of jobs?
The rise of industrial automation made manufacturing’s share of U.S. employment decline by 0.4% per year between 1960 and 2017. Those jobs did not disappear -- the total number of persons employed did not fall for decades. But production equipment, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and rudimentary forms of what we now call the internet of things (IoT) made manufacturing even more capital-intensive and less labor-intensive.
But AI puts automation on steroids. A report from the London Business School shows that simply investing in production-level robotics does not consistently result in a return on investment. But companies that retool business processes with AI and robotics combined are likely to see cost savings.
Workers, meanwhile, need to determine if their job or skills are likely to be automated. Research by academics at MIT and Carnegie Melon suggest some jobs are more vulnerable to AI than others; an article on this research identifies concierges, drafters, funeral directors and brokerage clerks as workers who should be nervous. Massage therapists, archaeologists, announcers and stucco masons can rest easier.
Call centers may take the hardest hit. Citigroup, for example, may replace tens of thousands of call center workers with AI. While new types of jobs will emerge over time, some regions of the country that are overly dependent on easily-automated jobs may need to consider a new strategy.
A Shift In How We Define Ourselves
Workers whose parents and grandparents enjoyed high-paying union factory jobs had to imagine a new future for themselves as automation pushed labor out of manufacturing. Now, these 21st-century workers face a new identity crisis. It's a struggle that former chess champion Garry Kasparov knows firsthand. Kasparov, the first current world champion to lose to an early chess supercomputer, says how the best chess is now played not by machines but by computer-human hybrids.
“I introduced what is called advanced chess; human plus machine against another human plus machine,” Kasparov wrote. “A human plus machine will always beat a super machine. The computer will compensate for our human weaknesses and guarantee we are not making mistakes under pressure … the most important thing is not the strengths of the human player. It is not the power of the computer. But it is the interface. It is the corporation.”
A Future For The Human Worker
What can we accomplish together, and how will that increased productivity be rewarded? Labor advocacy and visionary leadership from capitalists like Henry Ford gave us the 40 hour work week. While AI may not significantly reduce the average length of the workweek, I believe that the capital-intensive nature of industry will require that employers change work rules to accommodate a more hands-off approach to business.
There will be new jobs created by AI, but for now, high educational requirements mean only a select few can hold them. Today, creating and managing intelligent systems is the work of postdoctoral researchers or technologists with master’s degrees in data science. But this could change.
An AI In Every Pot
What gives me cause for hope though is that the software industry is preparing for rapid democratization of AI so that more people can leverage and benefit from intelligent systems. AI is being woven into the fabric of business software and declarative development is making coding accessible to the masses. Users can simply tell a system what a string of code or business logic needs to do, rather than generating command strings and syntax to achieve it.
This low-code approach is already in use in rudimentary fashion in customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The next step is enterprise-wide applications that harness AI to create and manage autonomous systems.
Ambitious employees may be able to self-educate and take over management of the AI systems. A clever entrepreneur could mash up AI and some 3D printers or machine tools to create an autonomous business with highly-configured or custom products.
As the way humans generate value changes, work may become more creative. While we cannot see precisely what the future holds, I think a shorter formal workweek could be a possibility — not because there's less work to do, but because we have more freedom and flexibility to create the next transformational idea that can be executed by AI.
