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Will ChatGPT Take Away Jobs? AI or Artificial Intelligence Taking Over Jobs Explained

873 views Wait, is this logic right? • Apr 25, 2023
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Slog Reference: Will AI take our jobs

Description

As AI taking away jobs? The ability of current-generation artificial intelligence or machine learning systems to solve complex problems and do things that previously only humans could do makes a way for an obvious question, is this AI going to take your job?

Although there might be no definitive answer to this, we can look at the historical data and analyse how automation has changed industries and jobs in the past. So, let's do that in this episode of the FutureIQ podcast with Dr Navin Kabra and R.J. Shrikant Joshi.

Let's try to understand the impact of the AI systems like ChatGPT and others on writing, programming and other creative/non-creative industries and try to answer whether or not AI can take our jobs.

More videos for you:
ChatGPT Can Make You Dumb OR Smart - You Choose: https://youtu.be/McdWSLWQUkA
Chunking to Improve Memory: https://youtu.be/hEycxtv5FCo
Spaced Repetition: https://youtu.be/JAPwrsm5OeA

Books:
Mindset: https://tapthe.link/MindsetBook

Links referred in the video:
Luddites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Learning how to learn: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:15 Automation & jobs
04:40 Tasks vs a Job
06:30 The Three Levels
10:55 Re-skill
14:30 The Ability to Learn
18:40 AI & Software Development
21:26 Skills of the Future
23:47 Ooda loop
25:00 Who's in Trouble?

#futureIQ #chatgpt

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Transcript

The layoffs are coming. Layoffs are coming for the ones who are not very good. Yeah, I can do comedy with a serious dead pan face. I mean, basically your shirt doesn't have any software in it. And if you get offended, you know what category you're falling in. Will AI take all our jobs? Are we all going to be unemployed? What do you think, Shriant? Okay, you are worried. So, let's talk about Let's let's just go with worry, right? Okay. So uh I have a graph which looks at typographer and compositor jobs.
Okay. Typographer. So in the 1970s and 1980s if you wanted something printed, right? You would just write on a piece of paper or type out material and give it to a typographer and they would choose the fonts, the layout and do all of that. uh and then create a page that gets put in the printing stuff to get printed. Right? I remember uh there used to be something called a DTP operator who used to even before DTP operator right this was not desktop publishing actual publishing in a big publishing house right and there there were these specialized jobs called typographer right um and what you will notice but this was definitely before computers came in I'm guessing
as soon as computers came in what hap what do you think happened to the typographer and compositor Yeah. As in fell that's where DTP came in. Right. Right. So and this is DTP came in and after that just word processors came in and even wanted publishing. Right. They just published on the web. So um and this has been a concern since say the industrial revolution right when uh a whole bunch of inventors invented these machines which could do the work of 30 men 50 men for uh jinning and spinning and harvesting and so on. Right? Since then people have been complaining about and worried about is the automation taking away my jobs. Right? Let's get back to
our example of typographers and compositors, right? I have another graph which shows that yes, typographer and compositor jobs went away. But if you look at graphic design jobs, those actually increased way more than the decrease in typographer and compositor jobs, right? Ah in fact net net the number of people with jobs in this area increased not just a little bit but significantly. Okay. Okay. Another example I have is say in in the US there were 400,000 accounting clerks. Right. These are the people who did their your accounting entries and did all the totals and made sure it matches up and so on.
This is back when balance sheets were written by hand. Correct. Left by income, right expense. Of course, as more and more uh of this stuff moved to computers and especially when the spreadsheet was invented. Yeah. Right. What do you think happened to these jobs? Now, I'm guessing the same thing as what happened to the typographer and the graphic design thing, which is what happened? What do you think? Which is the manual accounting people jobs went down, but the computer accounting jobs went way way up. Correct. So in fact I would put it slightly differently right so accounting clerks reduced right but accountants increased right and the difference is that the clerk used to spend a lot of
time writing things by hand and doing the maths and totaling and all that correct which now a computer does for free. So what an accountant does is not the calculations. An accountant does the more strategic thinking about how should your accounts be and what is your cash flow and is your debt too high and are you paying unnecessary taxes and so on. Right? Because the accounting clerk didn't have to waste time on calculations. She now has time to give you better advice and you know study accounting and taxation and all those things more deeply. and uh give you a higher level of service.
So what you're saying is automation took away one kind of job but replaced it replaced it with a totally different and more number of different jobs. Is that sort of account I mean automation doesn't take away jobs. It didn't replace it a totally different job, right? It's the same job just deeper and more uh uh strategic, right? Uh more value added. Correct. So, u 400,000 accounting clerks got replaced by 600,000 accountants, right? What AI does, automation in general and AI in particular, is it takes away tasks of a given role. It doesn't take away a job entirely, right? So if you were spending uh you know, nobody does just one thing all day, right? If you were
spending three hours doing X, 2 hours doing Y and 1 hour doing Zed, and automation takes away one of those things, the other two are still there. And whatever got taken away, you replace it with new tasks that you can now you're freed up to do because you're not wasting time on a boring uh thing. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. Because I I uh Okay. I'll be honest. I'll confess when I started the episode, I was very much on one side of this entire argument is that automation is taking away far more jobs. But now that he's explaining it this way, I do realize that there are parts of my tasks every day that can be automated that are
to some extent automated. And yeah, I have replaced the time that is going into automating these tasks with another different tasks that task that can't be as yet automated. Yes, exactly. And that will always happen, right? And that has happened since like I said the industrial revolution. Right. Correct. So I think it is interesting to think of this at three different levels right personal level then the level of a company and level of a country right okay um so u at a let's look at uh country right so in the industrial revolution there were some people who said oh my god this automation is going to take away jobs and then people are going to be unemployed and homeless
and starving and that is going to be horrible so what we should do is makes these machines illegal. Do you know who these people were? I lites. They were called lites. Okay. But think about it. Uh I mean, of course, they didn't succeed. We'll put a link to the concept of lites in the description. Do check it out. It's a very fascinating concept. Yeah. But so what it says is three things to me, right? One is leites didn't succeed and this can never succeed. M I mean trying to prevent the technology from happening just doesn't work right because if you manage to prevent it in your little area whatever somebody else somewhere will anyway do
it right the juggernaut of technology cannot be stopped exactly so I mean so that is one thing another thing is that if the lites in England had succeeded right where would England be today compared to what it I mean not today but say in 1950s okay compared to that right point is that in fact the fact that ladites didn't succeed allowed England to become the number one country in the world right UK u whereas the countries where the automation didn't come they continued in the old way of doing things and they were economically backward compared to the western countries right so that's another thing the way to think about it is that AI plus humans
will always beat just humans. Fair enough, right? Because the humans will do things that the AI can't do, right? The AI is there. It is doing a bunch of things and the humans will work on top of the AI uh which is better than just humans or just AI. Right? So the other example I want to give you is let's look at the company level. Suddenly let's say you are doing uh customer service of some sort. Uhhuh. And now chat GPT is there. So AI is able to do customer service.
Okay. One company fires all the customer service people and replaces them with AI. Correct. Okay. Right. Another company hires 80% of them, replaces them with AI, and uses two people plus AI to run the same level of customer service. Okay? And a third company keeps all of their staff, adds the AI and then retrains their staff to work with the work with the AI so that they are now able to uh provide 10x the customer service. Tell me which company is going to take over the world. The third one obviously the third one the first one is going to go out of business because that customer service is going to be terrible because the AI
can automate common things but there will always be common cases it can't handle in fact every customer service call is an edge case that cannot be handled through your regular help section which is why they approach the customer service in the first place the second company will sort of survive little for a while I mean it's able to give the same those people are going to quit immediately soon after because they can't handle the load no No, no, no, no. The whole point of AI is that uh the AI can help them be far more efficient. So they will be able to handle the load.
I was just kidding. Go on. Yeah, I can do comedy with a serious dead pan face. Go on. So uh they will uh I mean you know instead of thinking of this as a zero sum game that well I uh I mean I have to do the same thing now I can do use AI instead of the humans, right? That's not the right way to think about business or to think about human flourishing. Right? The right way to think is that now I can do so much more and you go ahead and do so much more. Right?
Companies that think like that will grow. Countries that think like that will develop faster. Right. Whereas the others will suffer. Right. Correct. It makes sense. It makes sense the way you explain it. that there is always the there is always the worry of not being able to reskill uh in this new role for example. Yes. So that is a serious problem. Okay. So I have sort of gibbly said that AI creates new jobs. In fact AI creates more jobs than it takes away. Uh and that has been true since the industrial revolution. Right.
Okay. But what was hidden in that statement is that the new jobs might not necessarily go to the same people. Correct? Because the new jobs require new skills. It's not entirely a new job, but there are skills that are needed. And if the person is not able to pick up the new skills, then that person will get fired and somebody else will get hired. Right. And this was also evident in the examples that you gave. When you were giving the examples, I was thinking about it. For example, the accounting clerks, their skill was to do mental maths very quickly. Yeah.
Whereas with the new jobs that came in with software, they didn't need to do mental maths at all. The software took care of the mental math. So, accounting clerks who relied entirely on their mental math skills had to reskill themselves into strategically thinking from the perspective from the perspective of the customer into working out their balance sheets to their advantage. So that involved all those tax planning and all of that. So there are two three categories of people who will run into trouble like this. Right?
So one category is people whose education has been very limited and who just don't have the basics to be able to pick up the new skills. Correct. Correct. And that is sad. I mean uh this is the reason why basic education is so important. Literacy is so important. Uh ability to read and learn new things is important. Second category of people is older people who would like to and who have the right attitude but who just don't have the energy or the flex mental flexibility and that is a serious problem. That is where countries need to worry about having uh you know social nets and things like that.
Yeah. Third and most important category which affects you and me and people like us right is that if you say oh no that is not my job my job is this why should I do that right for every new uh uh task or responsibility that is given to you you know people like this of course of course those people will be in trouble because the first thing that happens in any situation like this is that new tasks are dumped on you and if you say that's not my job then you are going to be the person who is not going to have a job tomorrow. This is in fact uh called a closed mindset. We have
another episode on closed mindset versus open mindset. Another fascinating uh concept. The link will be in the description or show notes. Just look for it. Correct. So I mean you need to have an open mindset. Most importantly what you need to have is the ability to learn on your own. Okay. One place where say India's education system falls short is that right now it is too focused on having identified a set of skills and teaching you just that and nothing else. Right? And if you are in denial about this um just I think uh it's a good place to start would be the stack overflow yearly review of which languages are popular.
Just go through the last 10 years and see how the rankings have changed. In fact let's take this concept of computer language right now. This is one of the highest skill jobs uh in the world right available and yet the number of people if I tell people that you should learn Python they they learned Java in college right and I tell them you should learn Python and they ask me okay where is it being taught right yeah and they just think of the only way to learn something is if you have a teacher who can teach you and if that is your mindset you're going to in trouble because the new skills needed when the AI start taking over
your old tasks right are not there in schools and there aren't teachers for that you have to learn on your own so ability to learn on your own ability to use online resources ability there all kinds of online courses right ability to uh pick up things quickly uh is important in fact on Corsera Do you know what is the number one course which is like head and shoulders above any other course in popularity? I don't actually want to take a guess on what topic it would be about on learning.
Yes, learning how to learn. It is not Java, it is not Python and it is not AI, right? It is learning how to learn. I have to take that course. Everybody should take that course. We'll put a link in the description/ show notes. Do check it out. But um speaking about the second category of people you mentioned a little while ago, people who are slightly older and not in the space to reskill themselves. Uh my worry is and uh this is I I know this is a this is probably not something that everybody shares with me but my worry is that uh the gap between new technologies emerging and the amount of time required to reskill ourselves is is very
disparate. like new technologies have now begun emerging every 5 years or so. Yes. So in five years whatever I have learned will suddenly become obsolete. Actually I mean part of it is just attitude and mindset. Okay. Right. Part of it I mean the the when there is something new which you need because you want to stay with your in touch with your friends you learn it pretty quickly. I mean you didn't have to uh WhatsApp was used by like the oldest and dumbest people without any problems right and part of it is if you get offended you know what category you're falling in so part of the reason is because WhatsApp is really easy and simple to use but part of it is
because they really want to use it and they're using it every day right the the everyday part is important being able to uh revise it continuously uh that's important that is another episode on uh chunking u and memory uh which we will do later but yeah u most things which you say are too difficult to learn really only boil down to I don't want to learn this well partially incentives are not right yeah the incentives are not right or the incentives don't really yeah fine fine fine I'll concede the point but In general, I think it is true that in a country, in a society, the incentives can be screwed up, right? And it takes a
while to fix them. So it is quite possible that as a country we might hit this problem and very badly unless we start rethinking about learning how to learn about attitude towards picking up new things and in general about attit I mean also our patience with teaching new things to older people right so all of these things are going to need cultural change and we need to worry about it it's not going to happen magically and yes 10 years from Now AI will have created a whole bunch of very interesting new jobs but along the way there will be a lot of heartbreak lot of upheaval um and we need to prepare for that.
I was specifically wondering about India as as a country because uh a lot of our exports are software developers and software related ITES services as they call it. Now that uh AI is being sort of regularly used in uh programming and development with copilot and whatnot, I wonder how it will affect software development and ites related jobs. My understanding is that uh AI these days is good enough that it can actually help you write software, right? My understanding is that good software engineers become 2x as productive uh using AI uh than without. Okay. Whereas uh bad software engineers can't even use the AI properly because the AI makes very subtle errors. It makes puts in bugs
that unless you you understand the domain properly, you might not even notice that there is a bug. Right? So bad software engineers will actually be out of a job and good software engineers will become even more productive and probably get paid more. Right? So the worry as far as India is concerned is that we have services companies which have managed to stuff themselves with too many of the bad category. uh and a lot of those people will be in trouble because the same service can be provided by much fewer people using AI right layoffs are coming layoffs are coming for the ones who are not very good right if you're a good software engineer I don't think you have
anything to worry about because there is unlimited um hunger for software right right now software is just being used in a very small fraction of our life right it can be used in much much more and how much more software is literally everywhere like no it does not right I mean basically your shirt doesn't have any software in it and uh your hair doesn't have software in it and there everywhere it could go and don't think of it as a bad thing I'm not thinking of it as a bad thing I'm just it's these are not things I would think of as software well this is soft and I wear it but not no exactly right I mean uh who would
have thought I No, no science fiction uh of from 40 years ago predicted social media right but uh and if you use social media right it is one of the best things that has happened to the world. So yeah, if you use social media right if and right has only one definition there not the multiple definitions that you encounter on social media. I don't use social media. I hate it. I should use it anyway. So um what would you say are the skills of the future that will be in demand in the future now that we have sort of agreed upon the fact that AI is inevitable. The juggernaut of technology is so I frankly don't know the answer.
Right. Five years ago, uh people were going around saying things like, you know, uh soft skills and ability to uh write poems and ability to compose music and all that are the things AI will never be able to do. Whereas, uh mechanical and repetitive things AI will do. But the last two years have shown us that none of that is true, right? The AI is being able to compose poems. AI is being able to uh make art. It's not very good. Right? So I think it's not easy to come up with a list. I mean there are lots of people who have come up with such lists and most of those lists are obsolete. It's not easy to come up with
lists. I think the way to think about it is that you need to be agile. You need to be constantly trying new things. You need to be constantly learning new things as in focus on learning how to learn. Don't focus on a list of things to learn. Again, that Corsera course is the link is in the description/show notes. And one thing I would say is that you should keep track of what new AI packages and platforms are becoming available. You should spend a little time experimenting with it. So you know what are the things AI is capable of doing. So you should know what are the things new things you need to learn. Yeah. For the
longest time, I thought the uh the area that I come from, which is radio, audio and podcasting would never get uh covered or would never get replaced by AI and that my job so to speak was um sort of not in trouble. But the recent development of chat GPT of something called dscript of something called sonantic has led me to question that. So I also I'm trying to think of where I can add AI into my life, my work process, my workflow and enhance the things that I can create because like Navin I'm also in agreement about one thing. I need to use AI to better myself and I need to replace some tasks in my
workflow with AI. So um so one thing I want to point out here is that our um instinct is to like do a big fat analysis and then come up with a plan for the next 5 years and say okay this is what I will learn to figure out how to deal with AI right and that doesn't work that works for simple things doesn't work for complex stuff and changing stuff like AI right okay that's where a very important concept called the UDA loop ODA uh comes And we have episode on that.
Yes. Which basically says yes, you might have a big picture plan whose details are not worked out but you have to constantly be doing experimentations. Look at the results of the experiments then reorient yourself uh and then repeat the whole process very quickly in a loop. Right? So try to do a fiveyear plan, try to do experimentation what you talked about, right? Yeah. Fascinating. So if you're worried about AI taking your job, don't think of it as taking your job. Think of it as taking a part of your job, which is basically a task that can be automated or can be, you know, put in a sort of a routine/loop/ whatever. Uh so who do you think is not in a good
position to leverage AI? Are there any groups of people who are not? Basically it boils down to the ones who say oh I can't learn new things or who say this is not my job right so the closed mindset people are the ones who will be in trouble keep an open mindset keep be ready to try different things be ready to experiment actually I'll be very interested to know from the people watching this episode whether AI has entered their domains and if it has entered their domains what are they doing about it or how it is affecting their dayto-day yeah would love to clear examples.
My worry is that AI has entered their domain but they haven't heard about it yet. Right? So that's why keeping track of these things is important. So maybe if if you think AI hasn't entered your domain, try and tell us where it could enter your domain and if it has already entered your domain, tell us where it has and what you're doing about it and how you plan to maybe leverage it. It would be an interesting conversation to have and another interesting video to do on the basis of what answers and what responses come.
Absolutely. So yeah, that is the answer to the question will AI take our jobs? The answer is no, but tasks. Yes. My name is Shri Kant. This is Naven. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.