More swell news on the AI Front

Hiawatha Bray is a columnist, focusing on tech, for The Boston Globe. Last month, he wrote a very a) sobering, b) scary, c) depressing, d) all of the above column on AI. 

Here's what he had to report:

A startling new study from Tufts University says that over 207,000 Boston-area workers and 260,000 statewide are likely to lose their jobs to AI systems over the next five years, resulting in $25.6 billion in lost wages, a major blow to the local economy.

The American AI Jobs Risk Index finds that Massachusetts is the US state with the highest risk of AI job losses. Only workers in the District of Columbia are in greater peril. Greater Boston ranks sixth among US metropolitan areas for expected job losses. (Source: Boston Globe)

So much for Massachusetts being the best state to live in. (See last Wednesday's post on my beloved Commonwealth.)

AI's coming after what we used to call "knowledge worker" jobs - the types of work that involve thinking, analyzing, using your brain. The kind of jobs that saved the Massachusetts economy when our manufacturing jobs went south. The jobs we have long prided ourselves on having. And working at. 

According to the Tufts study, writers and editors will be the first to go. "57 percent of such jobs are destined for the chopping block." That's just swell! So far, most of what I've read that's AI-generated is god-awful. Flat, stilted, not engaging. Often wrong when presenting "facts." But clearly I'm biased - that's BIASED with a capital B-I-A-S-E-D. 

And if you're thinking that the People of the Word should have become coders, think again. "55 percent [of colders are] likely to be pink-slipped."

Mathematicians, website developers, database architects, even atmospheric and space scientists are all in big trouble.

These grim prognostications could come true later, if companies lighten up on AI adoption. Or more rapidly if they go balls-to-the-wall.

On the upside, there will be new jobs that come about because of AI. (Someone has to mind the beast so it won't "write" complete untruths or cook the books.) But there'll be fewer of those to go around.

Years ago, when pretty much the last of the shoe industry had fled the States, I heard designer and shoe maven Kenneth Cole interviewed on NPR. He said that there would be plenty of good jobs for shoe designers. 

Hmmm. Just how many folks who worked on the shoe assembly line are going to become designers? I'd say virtually none, and I speak from a position of authority having had "lived experience" working on the line in a shoe factory. (I believe that the building is now condos.)

And what's the ratio of shoe manufacturing jobs to shoe designer jobs? 1,000:1, 10,000:1?

What AI produces in terms of jobs will be nowhere near what it puts out of existence. 

But what's the biggy dealy, as long as the AI tech bros get to be trillionaires?

The jobs that will survive now include human dishwasher. Not because a robot can't replace a dishwasher. It's that the cost of the machine is still higher than paying starvation wages. 

Most job "for those who work with their hands" are safe. At least for now. But caveat, everybody.

Tom Malone is a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He's conducting a lot of analysis on what AI is doing for and to us, and is a little more upbeat about the prospect of no jobs, nowhere, no how:

Malone’s team didn’t estimate how many jobs AI will either destroy or create. But over the long run, he’s more optimistic than the Tufts researchers. “I think people are overestimating how bad it’s going to be,” Malone said.

Thank you, Tom Malone. 

Maybe it's a little okay to feel cautiously optimistic about the brave new world?

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Image Source: Marc Stone