QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Will artificial intelligence lead to greater appreciation of ‘working class’ jobs?
The professions we were discussing were accountancy and law, though the medical profession is most immediately at risk of losing work to robots: in diagnostics, prescription and surgery. AI in medicine is already in the news. But consider accountancy. At first the use of AI will come as a boon. Think of all the fairly mindless legwork, the retrieval of records, the processing of data, the assembling, charting, calculating and presentation of accounts; the discovery and reconciling of discrepancies. AI can do a lot of this. Important questions of inspection and judgment will remain (at least for the time being) the preserve of humans, and in the short term this will make accountancy a more stimulating job by removing much of the drudgery. But drudgery means time; and time, at present, means human labor. Look at what happened to bank clerks.
We should not assume that computers will automatically replace humans: they may compete with them. Might white–collar workers’ salary levels stagnate, for fear of being priced out of the number-crunching market by AI? How many small businesses could now manage without the services of an accountant unless the latter lower their fees?
Next, our conversation moved to the legal profession. One of us thought it will prove easier with AI to get a legal opinion cheaply; lawyers — able now to use AI themselves — may have to lower their fees. My own view is that researching possible precedents in case law may require a grasp of abstract reasoning not yet given to computers, but I may be wrong.
In summary, AI will be able — is already able — to remove millions of man-hours from a wide range of white-collar work, flooding the labor market with redundant human operatives. But what of tradesmen? Plumbing, heating, wiring, roofing, domestic repair and renovation? Housebuilding, electricians’ work, gardening, mowing, plastering, bricklaying, tiling, furniture removals, road-mending, ditch-digging, vehicle maintenance and repair? What of the catering trades, cooking and waiting-on-table? What of cleaners, nannies, nurses, hairdressers, roofers, bouncers, dustmen, foresters and dog-walkers?
As Glenn wrote in the New York Post in January: The white-collar class derided mass layoffs among the blue-collar workers. It’s about to feel their pain.
People losing their jobs to AI is just the tip of the iceberg.
In the next decade, lots more people — possibly (gulp) including professors like me — will be facing potential replacement by machines.
It turns out that using your brain and not your hands isn’t as good a move as it may have once seemed.
People who work with their hands have some advantages.
If you want something done in the material world, you still need people.
(I replaced a toilet seat some time back while pondering these issues and reflected that neither an AI nor a worker in Bangalore could have taken that job.)
A lot of young Americans, especially males, are forgoing traditional college to enter the trades, as welders, plumbers, HVAC technicians and the like.
That’s probably smart. AI won’t be able to replace those jobs.
As Brian Wang notes, robots probably will, one day — but that day is nowhere near as close.
There is however, one group of blue collar workers who may be talking themselves out of a job much quicker than they ever imagined:
The dockworkers are worried about the ports getting automated and losing their jobs in the long term. And reports indicate they want assurances that there will be a total ban on automation.
In other words, no robots when it comes to loading and unloading freight. That includes cranes, gates and moving containers.
Unfortunately, I’ve got bad news for these folks.
Automation and AI are coming whether they like it or not. The proverbial horse has left the barn.
If we were to ban automation at our ports, it would put the U.S. economy at a major competitive disadvantage. I doubt the Chinese are going to ban automation at their ports, for example.
The fact of the matter is AI is going to completely reshape our world in the months and years to come.
Unfortunately, plenty of companies – thousands of companies – will fail to adapt. They’ll be rendered completely obsolete as AI technology reshapes the business landscape.
AI technology will usher in sweeping societal changes… just like the personal computer, the internet, and the smartphone did. Only the changes this time will be even faster and more disruptive.
And robotic automation is one of them.
The reality is robots don’t sleep. They don’t take vacations. They never need a break. They’re more efficient. And they don’t go on strike, either.
Union bosses who mutter phrases such as “I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means. Nobody does,” could well be exponentially speeding up their men’s obsolescence, and not exactly building up John Henry levels of sympathy for them for when the inevitable happens:
