The shadow of AI continues to loom over the workplace as the AI companies have their IPOs, but don’t worry, McSweeney’s has a handy guide to understanding the economics of the situation.
Meanwhile, on a personal level, you might be wondering how your job may or may not be impacted or outright obliterated by the implementation of AI. However, thinking of my AI post last month, there are several people who are noting the sometime overlooked fact that any job is a series of tasks and functions… and AI is rather amplifying that… especially when you get rid of the whole human instead of figuring out what tasks the AI could automate.
Here, Nils Gilman, writing for Noema, starts from that premise that AI can’t and shouldn’t automate an entire job. He goes on to note how having a liberal arts background can help in terms of evaluating what might be an ever-increasing number of AI outputs. Now while I’m not sure what the conventional wisdom is on liberal arts degrees these days –or even if we can get conventional wisdom in this fractured age– I have had plenty of conversations with people who are dismissive of their value. I remain unconvinced and I’m not alone. Those folks at Harvard have some thoughts on liberal arts, for instance. So do folks at the University of Chicago. Yes, I know they might all be in the pocket of Big Brain, but they’re not in the pocket of Deep Thought… and many of them will have gotten that reference.
Anyway, Gilman also ponders the question that really needs to be pondered harder: if we’re eliminating all the entry-level jobs, where and how are people going to gain skills to be the senior people with decades of experience we’re leaning on now?
That’s a question I’m going to ponder further myself, as if you haven’t surmised, I’m going to do a lot more AI posts for the forseeable future.