“Alright, we’re going to start this lesson with a question that’s on the mind of a lot of people these days amidst all these big developments in the field of artificial intelligence. And that question is: how long will it take for the machines to replace us, will it take ours? jobs?”
This is the beginning of a segment that will air on CBS’s morning news show (headlined “Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Jobs?”). Some excerpts:
“As artificial intelligence gets better… job security is only supposed to get worse. And in reports like this, the top jobs our AI overlords plan to kill are often on the list, coding or computer programming. For the indulgence of Sam Zonka, a programmer and instructor at the General Assembly Programming School in New York, I decided that the Testing the idea of an upcoming AI acquisition — by seeing if the software could code for someone who knows as little about computers as I do — eliminating the need to hire someone like him.”
Gayle King: So all this on-screen gibberish. Is that what the people in these classrooms learn?”
“And I, for one, was prepared to be amazed. But take a look at the results. About as simple as a simple website can be.”
King: What do you think? you are the pro
Zonka: Uh.
[Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also spoke to CBS right before the launch of its OpenAI-powered Bing search engine, arguing that AI will create more satisfaction in current jobs as well as more net new jobs — and even helping the economy across the board. “My biggest worry,” Nadella says, “is we need some new technology that starts driving real productivity. It’s time for some real innovation.]
King: Do you think it will drive up wages?
Nadella: I do think it will drive up wages because productivity and wages are related.
At the end of the report, King says to his co-hosts, “Long term, research suggests Nadella is right. In the long term more jobs, more money. In the short term, all the pain happens.”
The report also includes an interview with MIT economist David Autor, in which he says that the rise of AI “actually means millions of jobs will change in our lives,” points out, for example, that more than 60% of… Types of jobs people do today that didn’t even exist in the 1940s — while many of the jobs that existed have been replaced.”
There was also a quote from Meredith Whittaker (co-founder of the AI Now Institute and former FTC advisor) who notes that AI systems “do not replace human labor to ensure they work well. Whose job is being demoted and whose house in the Hamptons is getting a new wing? I think that’s the fundamental question as we look at these technologies and ask questions about the work.”
King later tells his co-hosts that Whittaker suggested that workers organize to try to shape the implementation of AI systems in their workplace.
But at an open house for the General Assembly code camp, Coder Zonka said on a scale of 1 to 10 his concern for AI was only a 2. “The problem is I’m not quite sure if the AI replace me is in 10 years, 20 years or 5 years.”
After speaking to all the experts, King summarized what he had learned. “No panic. You see these lists of all the jobs that are being eliminated. We’re not very good at making predictions like that. Things happen differently than we expect. And you might actually find an opportunity to make more money if you figure out how to complement the machine instead of being replaced by the machine.”
