What are the impacts of Artificial Intelligence to the workforce in the U.S. and how can workers adapt?
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has recently become one of the most famous technologies being implemented in the world. The name can be seen in many places, ranging from household products implemented A.I. technologies to ground-breaking projects such as Sophia the humanoid robot which can maintain social interaction, and most importantly, learn and mimic human’s behaviors using symbolic A.I. Therefore, because of the advancement in A.I. technology having so much potential, the on-going debate is about whether in the future, A.I. applications would eventually replace humans, leaving workers at risk of losing their jobs, or it would open up an entire new technological era of possibilities for us humans to discover? Despite the advancement in A.I. technology having so much potential, A.I. applications would not replace humans anytime near in the future. But rather, A.I. will open up a whole new field for workers.
Human race has experienced several technological revolutions in the past, many jobs have become obsolete, but many new technological fields have been opened in the long run. In the second half of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, the Second Industrial Revolution had replaced a significant number of human workers with machines. Because of the application of electricity, mass production was made possible which produced more jobs for workers. Although the rapid change created short-term job losses, but with new skills to be required, workers would have retained their jobs. In addition, during the third industrial revolution, with the advancement of supercomputers, jobs were enhanced and automated, which also brought out the fear of job losses among U.S. workers. Despite that job losses were true to workers without adaptations to the usage of computers in the workplace, computers brought many more jobs to the job market including software and hardware engineering, both did not exist previously yet now they are two most promising jobs on the market. Therefore, history has proven that whenever new and promising breakthroughs appear, fear of replacement will occur, but soon enough new jobs will be created for those who are adaptable to the rapid change of technology.
Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence during our 4.0 technological era is predicted to experience a similar trend during the Second and the Third Industrial Revolution, which means Artificial Intelligence will make a substantial number of jobs become obsolete, but new jobs will also be created correspondingly after adaptation. According to a report about the future of work through 2030 conducted by authors at McKinsey Global Institute, approximately 50% of current work activities are technically automatable by applying new technologies including Artificial Intelligence, and 5% of jobs will likely disappear within the next two decades (Manyika). With that being said, while Artificial Intelligence and automation have a significant potential to push productivity and economic growth, millions of workers may need to switch their occupations or upgrade their skills. In that same report, labor demand for predictable physical work such as fine-equipment installation and repair workers is predicted to reduce by 31% because of automation. Meanwhile, labor demand for technology professionals in the United States such as computer engineers and computer specialists is predicted to grow by a considerable figure of 34%. The survey has proven the remarkable potential of Artificial Intelligence in changing the labor force, which will make many current workers at risk of occupation changes. “The distinction is not blue- or white-collar jobs, but routine and non-routine jobs. “Routine jobs are being automated, both skilled and non-skilled” (Grose) says a professor of engineering who directs the Discovery Analytics Center at Virginia Tech in American Society of Engineering Education magazine. The article further affirms that safe jobs will reside at the two extreme ends of the workforce continuum, with engineers, CEOs, scientists at the top end, and unskilled workers in non-routine jobs such as gardeners, healthcare workers accumulate the lower end. Middle-income occupations will be most affected and could possibly shrink because of the vast fields of occupations that middle-income workers occupied and also because A.I-implemented automatic applications target changes in mass-production and work related to predictions and actuaries.
However, Artificial Intelligence will open up an entire new field of labor, just like the advance of computers did back in the Third Industrial Revolution. It is undeniable that Artificial Intelligence is penetrating into more fields than ever, ranging from agricultural to retail industry, which means that there must be workers who can train the A.I systems to do the work effectively, workers who manage the systems, and people to work with business owners and workers as a bridge to help them adapt to the applications of Artificial Intelligence. According to an article written by the global lead of Artificial Intelligence and information technology director at Accenture Research, which studied more than 1000 large companies already using or testing A.I. systems, the three new categories created by Artificial Intelligence are respectively called trainers, sustainers and explainers (Wilson). Trainers will teach the Artificial Intelligence systems how to perform by mimicking human behaviors and reduce operation errors. In the article, the category includes new roles such as smart-machine interaction modeler, who helps the machine mimic human behaviors, and worldview trainer, who trains the systems to take other cultural perspectives into account when processing. Explainers will work to reduce the gap between technologists and business leaders by providing clarity in Artificial Intelligence implementations, and help explain the inner working algorithms of complex systems to nontechnical professionals. System sustainers are workers who ensure the systems operate as desired without any glitches. In the future, this section will play a crucial role since more and more companies are transforming their work using Artificial Intelligence, thus needing people who can help maintain the systems. The three sections alone are predicted to become blooming careers in the future, compensating the loss of jobs due to automation, creating enormous career shifts to mid-career workers with a figure ranging from 75 million to 375 million people worldwide need to switch occupational categories (Manyika), according to the mentioned article published in McKinsey Global Institute.
What are the solutions to secure a sustainable career? An article in Harvard Business Review in 2016, written about how Artificial Intelligence will redefine management in the future, has suggested several solutions to sustain a career during the technological revolution (Kolbjørnsrud, 6). For business owners, they should explore early and practice leaving administration to Artificial Intelligence. This means treating intelligent machines as tools or colleagues instead of racing against them, let them support business owners with decision tasks and spend more time on strategy and innovation. For mid-level managers, retraining and upskilling are essential to adapt to the implementations of technology, including training with data sets and basic understanding of Artificial Intelligence’s applications in the workplace (Bughin, 5). In addition, mid-career managers also need to enhance their skills in managing sectors that are not capable of automation. Technology should also be put at the forefront of education, whether it is learnt directly through specific courses related to Artificial Intelligence or Computer Science, or indirectly through the use of technology in solving problems.
In conclusion, Artificial Intelligence and automation certainly will redistribute the workforce, and its implementation will substitute human labor in many sectors because of their effects in productivity and economic growth. However, Artificial Intelligence will not likely to fully replace humans, it will only shift the workforce to tasks that are not capable of automation. In addition, Artificial Intelligence will also bring a whole new sector of jobs to operate the system and train non-professionals to understand the implementations of A.I. Therefore, to earn career security, technology-oriented trainings are essential to all workers despite their current level.
Works Cited
1. Bughin, Jacques, et al. “Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce.” McKinsey Global Institute 1 (2018): 3–84.
2. Grose, Thomas K. “REPLACED BY MACHINES.” ASEE Prism, vol. 26, no. 7, 2017, pp. 30–33.
3. Kolbjørnsrud, Vegard, Richard Amico, and Robert J. Thomas. “How artificial intelligence will redefine management.” Harvard Business Review 2 (2016): 1–6.
4. Manyika, James, et al. “Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation.” McKinsey Global Institute 150 (2017).
5. Wilson, H. James, Paul Daugherty, and Nicola Bianzino. “The jobs that artificial intelligence will create.” MIT Sloan Management Review 58.4 (2017): 14.