Ever since AI has started to take boom, the world seems divided in mostly two groups. One group opines that while AI may eat up some type of jobs but it will enable more jobs. And then there is the other group which believes that AI will cause unemployment on a mass scale.
A long-term study done on US Census data was recently published and it highlights whether technological innovations are leading to automation only (i.e. mass unemployment) or they are also enabling newer jobs in the market. The findings are very interesting.
Job Emergence due To Technological Evolution
The study was done by evaluating 35,000 occupations from 1940 – 2018 from the U.S. Census Bureau which included 15,000 specialized knowledge. According to the study, many new jobs arrived on the scene during that period due to surge of technological inventions. But a lot of them also came because of consumer demand like healthcare.
Also it has to noted that from 1940 – 1980, many new jobs did not required specialized knowledge such as clerical work, administrative jobs, manufacturing and etc. However, the period from 1980 – 2018 saw a remarkable demand for only specialized knowledge that pays extremely well like in the case of coding, programming, but the rest of the jobs are only available for a very low wage because those jobs are easier to get automated.
“Most contemporary jobs require expertise that didn’t exist back then, and was not relevant at that time.”says Autor, one of the co-authors of the study.
According to the study, technology has produced more jobs since 1980 than it has produced. The effect of augmentation i.e. job creation due to new technologies has slowed down from 1980 – 2018 as compared to the period from 1940 – 1980.
How will AI impact Future Jobs?
According to the study, there is a high chance that AI may take the position of a high-skill expertise will may require a human supervisor to complement the decision-making tasks.
“AI is really different,” Autor says. “It may substitute some high-skill expertise but may complement decision-making tasks. I think we’re in an era where we have this new tool and we don’t know what’s good for. New technologies have strengths and weaknesses and it takes a while to figure them out. GPS was invented for military purposes, and it took decades for it to be in smartphones.”
With the likes of ChatGpt, which provides information in a human-conversational style, one can imagine the level of information-curation that AI is capable of, which earlier required significant human resources. Similarly, tools such as generative AI, and background removal, photo editing, text to image creation are beginning to proliferate in the industry now which are likely to lead to more job losses.
The study also highlights that people with college degree are 25% likely to get employment in the new job market compared to the ones who have anything less than a high-skill diploma.
