Is AI jobs crisis already here?

Is AI a threat to jobs? Repeated opinion polls have shown high levels of concern in many countries. Up to now the evidence has been at best contradictory but that has not stopped growing disquiet as the large technology companies developing ever more sophisticated Large Language Models promote their applications as boosting productivity (Agents are the latest craze).

The futurist, Gerd Leonhard points to the new startup, 'Mechanize.work' which he says lays it out clearly: *"Today we’re announcing Mechanize, a startup focused on developing virtual work environments, benchmarks, and training data that will enable the full automation of the economy.

But, he says “in REAL LIFE / IRL many so-called routines or commodity tasks still demand embodied judgment, social nuance, holistic understanding and contextual awareness; capabilities that – being devoid of agency and consciousness – no algorithm can reliably emulate.  The dream of wholesale human replacement feels more like a sales pitch, or a Wall-E episode than a panacea.”  

However, Brian Merchant in his newsletter Blood in the Machine, says the AI jobs crisis is already here. He points to the language learning developers DuoLingua who have adopted an AI first strategy. Duolingo he says, “has already replaced up to 100 of its workers—primarily the writers and translators who create the quirky quizzes and learning materials that have helped stake out the company’s identity—with AI systems.”

And “managers are using AI to displace artists and designers in the video game industry. Voice actors have been on strike for 9 months now, seeking protections from corporations that would use AI to clone their voices. Just this week, the popular gaming website Polygon was sold off to the content farm Valnet that’s often accused of running AI-generated articles—almost all of Polygon’s human staff was fired.”

Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market says Derek Thompson writing an article in the Atlantic which has provoked much commentary. He asks “Why has employment among young university graduates in the US dropped so drastically, to the point that they're worse off than the average?" He sees it as a new sign that AI is competing with college graduates for jobs.

However he notes that “what we’re seeing is the continuation of a trend we’ve been watching for over a decade. ”

It is possible that this is due to the Great Recession and COVID. "Or it may be that  college degrees just aren’t worth as much in the job market anymore; the investment in learning no longer guarantees a solid return."

But the evidence against AI is adding up. “As law firms leaned on AI for more paralegal work, and consulting firms realized that five 22-year-olds with ChatGPT could do the work of 20 recent grads, and tech firms turned over their software programming to a handful of superstars working with AI co-pilots, the entry level of America’s white-collar economy would contract.”

That reading fits what Harvard economist David Deming tells Thompson:

“When you think from first principles about what generative AI can do, and what jobs it can replace, it’s the kind of things that young college grads have done. They read and synthesize information and data. They produce reports and presentations.”

Countering this is the productivity charts which remain sluggish. But innovation takes time to be adopted and diffuse, whether it’s AI, the internet, mobile phones, or computers. “There’s a delay between when AI starts replacing workers and when the productivity gains begin to show up in the metrics.”

Brian Merchant says “One of the biggest questions—perhaps the big question—that has persistently circled the AI boom is how it will impact our working lives and jobs more broadly. Will AI lead to a jobs crisis? Poll after poll has found that it’s the top concern that people have with AI: That AI will take jobs and make our working lives worse. To an extent, the big AI companies encourage this line. OpenAI, Anthropic, and its competitors are selling a brand of automation software whose key value proposition is that it can replace tasks and workers to slash labor costs."

About the Image

"prediction" provides a hypothetical vignette of AI education. Using simple, icon-based imagery, it depicts a small-group seminar in which an expert (here, a wheelchair user) explains risk prediction algorithms for cardiovascular disease to two students within the health sciences. Disabled people may interact with health systems more frequently than the general public, and this artwork touches on the value this group brings to those systems and their AI-ification.