The general saying in the last couple of months has been that it is not AI but the people who are conversant in AI will take your job. It has also been told over and over again that some jobs will be lost and new genres of jobs will be created. This understanding of AI which has come to be widely believed has added a sense of complacency to management and the human resources who are likely to be impacted. With a large number of job losses happening last year and some early this year, one is made to believe that the worst is over or might be all is over on this front.
The poster boy of AI has a totally take on what AI can do to the job market. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO warns that AI will take away some jobs, but worries the world is not ready for that. He has been one of the influential voices in AI, known for candid assessments of both the promise and disruption brought by new technologies. The impact of it all on employment can be telling. “AI is for sure going to change a lot of jobs, totally taking some away, and creating a bunch of new ones. Technology driven job change has a long history by now but what is tricky this time is just the rate of change which it looks like, will happen.
Sam Altman’s job prophecy, concomitant to AI, of totally taking some jobs, translates to warning that entire swathes of the workforce, especially in areas like customer support are at the risk of disappearing as AI agents can perform those roles much faster, without error and at least cost. He cautions that traditional positions in software development, product design, and IT support could also go obsolete more quickly than people expect. Even within the tech industry, mass job loss and restructuring are likely as a result of rapid advancements in generative AI.
The trajectory now is broadly known, the pace which depends on a variety of factors remains unknown. What is also known is that this tech revolution would be unlike any other industrial revolution the world has ever experienced. Generative AI, which has both headwinds and tailwinds is not the only thing as we have ourselves to believe. Altman says that humanity isn’t prepared for something else he believes will have a greater impact: “The thing the world is not ready for is, I don’t think the world has had the humanoid robots moment yet, and I don’t think that’s very far away from a visceral ‘this is going to do a lot of things that people used to do.’ It’s coming.
IT’S TO TIME TO PREPARE TO FACE THE TOPSY TURVY FUTURE OF JOBS.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.