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Let’s begin by positing two contradictory facts that exist at the same time: Artificial intelligence is a disruptive technology that is indisputably benefiting humankind. It is already improving the quality of our daily lives, our performance on-the-job, the efficacy of our medicines, and even the accuracy of line calls at professional tennis matches. But because it is disruptive, it is also harming the wellbeing of many people and has the potential to harm many more.
For the moment at least, that harm principally involves job loss. Employers are replacing workers with AI-powered applications in almost every profession, craft and trade. While there is room for debate about how many human workers will ultimately be displaced by AI, there is absolutely no doubt that the technology is already having or will shortly have a significant impact on the employability of many people.
The World Economic Forum, for example, has predicted that barely a half-decade from now, by 2030, 92 million human jobs will be lost to AI. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas suggests that even that near-term estimate may be too conservative. It reports that AI replaced workers in 10,000 private sector jobs in the month of July alone. My estimate is a bit less dramatic. I wrote a book in 2018 – Circa 2118 – where I argued that it would take 100 years for AI to replace humans in many if not most jobs, but that such an outcome would in fact occur. For that reason, I believe our workplace is on the way to becoming a Desk Desert.
The palliative for this harm typically takes the form of reassuring workers that this is nothing new. Economists, academicians and technologists alike point out that new technologies have always been disruptive. Take electricity, the personal computer, the combustion engine – all have thrown people out of their “old” jobs and forced them to move on to “new” and presumably better ones. It’s just the way disruptive technologies work, they claim. As the saying goes in physical fitness, “no pain, no gain.”
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In my view, analogizing the impact of AI on workers to previous technological disruptions is off the mark. It assumes that the old-to-new jobs transition is some kind of natural law that makes its occurrence inevitable. But, here’s the rub. The new jobs created by or in conjunction with those earlier technological transformations did not require workers to enter much more intellectually and technically complex occupations. AI does.
So, a better analogy for what’s happening in the workplace is the technology-rendered Rust Belt. There were several dynamics behind the creation of that localized depression, but one of the most important was the decrepit condition of the area’s manufacturing infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s. Faced with global competition powered by cheaper labor and better manufacturing technology, many U.S. companies shut their plants and shipped their production lines (and the jobs they supported) offshore. Yes, the lower cost of labor was a factor, but it was the advanced technology in China, Mexico and Canada that threw U.S. workers out of their jobs.
Economists and state and local governments told the displaced workers they could and would find new and better jobs through retraining. Forget that old job, they were counseled, and get a shiny, new one in a different occupation or industry. Ditch everything you’ve learned and know how to do, and get schooled in something with a future (at least for the moment), no matter how overwhelming the process or uncomfortable that new job might be. The condescending assumption underlying this advice was that the old-to-new job transition was a paradigm everyone was willing and able to accept. People were like kids’ transformers, malleable at will.
Federal and state governments even spent billions of dollars to ensure the human transformation occurred. While some in the labor force did in fact benefit and were able to make a successful transition, far too many were left stranded and unable to compete in the job market. One writer what happened this way: “As factories were abandoned, Midwestern and Great Lake communities that depended on manufacturing jobs faced unemployment, economic decline and population loss. Industrial Heartland cities like Detroit and Cleveland saw a nearly 50 percent population decline between 1970 and 2006.”
The Rust Belt may symbolize manufacturing decline, but it is also irrefutable proof that the old-to-new jobs paradigm does not apply to today’s disruptive technology. The harm imposed by AI will not inevitably be mitigated by human transformation. What does that mean? Without effective intervention, the Desk Desert will be the Rust Belt on steroids. Human job loss won’t be localized in one region of the country but nationwide, and it won’t be limited to one sector of the economy, but in every facet of the world of work.
So, what’s the solution? What does effective intervention look like?
I don’t know. But getting the answer should be a national priority. It should be the Operation Warp Speed of the AI Revolution – a hyper-focused, unconstrained commitment to finding a way to capture the societal benefits of artificial intelligence while simultaneously advancing the wellbeing of working men and women.
Food for Thought,
Peter
Peter Weddle has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and CEO of TAtech: The Network for Talent Technology Solutions.
