Elon Musk insists that artificial intelligence will lead humans to a point where “work is not needed”.
Are there signs that this prediction is already coming true? Heading numbers can make it look that way.
According to a recent report of 750 business leaders using AI by ResumeBuilder37% say technology will replace workers in 2023. Meanwhile, 44% say there will be layoffs in 2024 as a result of the effectiveness of artificial intelligence.
But even amid reports of AI-inspired layoffs, many experts disagree with Musk’s view.
Julia Toothacre, resume and career strategist at ResumeBuilder, acknowledges that the numbers from her survey may not accurately reflect the broader business landscape. “There are still so many traditional organizations and small businesses that don’t embrace technology the way some of the larger companies do,” Toothacre said.
Layoffs are a reality, but AI technology is also enabling business leaders to restructure and redefine the jobs we do.
Alex Hood, chief product officer at project management and collaboration software company Asana, estimates that half the time we spend at work is on what he calls “work for work.” Here, it refers to status updates, cross-departmental communication, and all the other parts of the job that aren’t core to why we’re there.
“If that can be reduced because of artificial intelligence, that could be a great unlock,” Hood said.
He says that without the nuance behind the numbers, statistics noting and predicting AI-induced layoffs reflect fear more than reality.
With AI tackling task-based work, people have the opportunity to move up the value chain, says Marc Cenedella, founder of Leet Resumes and Ladders. “For the whole economy,” Cenedella said, workers will be able to focus on “completing or structuring or defining what task-based work is.” He compares this shift to mid-century office culture, when there were entire floors of typists — something that the efficiency of word processors eliminated.
White work and “human-centric” artificial intelligence
According Asana’s State of AI at Work 2023 report, workers say 29% of their job duties can be replaced by AI. However, Asana is an advocate of what it calls “human-centric AI,” which seeks to enhance human capabilities and collaboration, not replace humans. The more people understand human-centric AI, the more they believe it will have a positive impact on their work, the report says.
White-collar and office workers represent somewhere in between 19.6%-30.4% of all employed worldwide, according to the United Nations. Analytical and communication tools have redirected the work of knowledge over the years, and “genetic artificial intelligence should be considered another development in this long continuum of change.”
But from 2022, 34% of the world population still didn’t have access to the Internet, so any discussion of AI’s impact on layoffs and potential job restructuring must also include discussion of a broader point between the tech-haves and have-nots.
Employee personal liability and artificial intelligence
For professionals seeking to avoid redundancy in an AI-powered work environment, there are steps to take.
Cenedella says being a modern professional comes with a level of personal responsibility. “Part of your job is to keep developing new skills,” he said. “If you learned some software five years ago, that’s not enough. You need to learn new software today.”
While positions like research and data analysis are in line with AI automation, for example, companies will still need someone to prompt the AI, understand the results and take action.
“My advice for anyone is to understand how AI could impact your position in your industry right now,” Toothacre said. “At least you have an idea of what to expect, instead of having no idea what’s going on.”
But Cenedella also acknowledges that there is an expectation for business leaders to help employees continue to develop their skills during their time with the company. “Just in their own interest, companies that fund the development of their employees will be in a better position to be a little bit ahead of companies that don’t,” he said.
Even Hood, which is at the forefront of creating collaboration and project management solutions using artificial intelligence, is still experimenting with its own products. In preparation for an upcoming performance review for one of his team members, Hood experimented with asking the AI to summarize how he was working with the team member.
The AI created a list of all their shared interests, all their assignments and comments to each other, and a characterization of their relationship based on the messages they’ve sent each other. In it, Hood exemplifies what artificial intelligence might look like.
“You learn it by asking him questions and seeing what he can do, and in some ways you’re disappointed, and in some ways you’re impressed, and then you lean into it,” Hood said. “The best thing employers can do is empower people to understand what the art of the possible is through individual experimentation using AI today.”
While layoffs are occurring as a result of the current generation of AI, there is no historical evidence that technological advances like this will lead to mass unemployment. The workforce has a history of scarcity, and increased technological capability can lead to “higher-value” work, as Cenedella puts it — and greater productivity that future generations of AI will likely learn to handle.