AI probably won’t cost you your job
IBM’s chief says the company may replace outgoing workers with AI, but others say jobs can be transformed
The chief executive of computing titan IBM has apparently confirmed the deepest fears of many workers, economists, and politicians: Artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT threaten to eliminate white-collar jobs by the thousands.
Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg this week that his company expects to hire 7,800 fewer workers in the next five years for human resources and other back-office tasks, because Krishna believes AI systems can handle the work. For now, IBM doesn’t plan any layoffs related to AI; instead, as workers in these areas depart, they’ll often be replaced by software, not people.
With the rise of AI systems that can write respectable prose, generate computer programs, and create high-quality digital artwork, it’s no surprise that some companies hope to use them in place of people. But IBM is the first major corporation to put a number on how many jobs could disappear. And if other big firms are thinking similar thoughts, it could mean major job losses throughout the US economy.
“I do think it’s a really big deal,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the impact of technology on the labor force.
But Autor says there’s no reason to panic. While he agrees that AI is destined to disrupt labor markets, “I don’t think it means the end of employment,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s any expectation that we’re going to run out of work.”
Autor and other academic analysts say some jobs will be eliminated, but many others will be transformed. Expect humans to focus on activities that require innovative thinking, long-range planning,
and direct contact with people. Meanwhile, AI systems will specialize in demanding but less creative stuff, like summarizing vast amounts of information, analyzing legal documents, or interpreting medical test results.
It’s easy to think of technical innovations that were expected to result in massive job losses, but didn’t. When automatic teller machines arrived in the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of bank teller jobs were supposed to vanish. But a 2015 paper by Boston University economist James Bessen found that US banks still employed hundreds of thousands of tellers. As of 2021, the number was 378,000, according to the US Labor Department.
What happened? Individual bank branches did hire fewer tellers, reducing their labor costs. But they used the savings to open more branches, thereby attracting more customers and deposits. These customers wanted better service, so the branches hired more tellers.
Something similar happened with self-checkout kiosks in supermarkets. They were introduced over 30 years ago, to reduce the need for human cashiers. Yet today there are still more than three million cashiers in the United States. In addition, supermarkets have had to hire extra tech-savvy employees to keep the kiosks working.
And these are relatively lowskill jobs. People with more advanced skills should be in even better shape. (Emphasis on “should.”)
Consider radiologists, a medical specialty where AI is already making a dent. About a third of US radiologists were using AI tools in their work as of 2020, according to the American College of Radiology. These systems are capable of examining X-rays or CT scans and spotting ailments a human might miss. Despite this, the Association of American Medical Colleges says the US is facing a shortage of radiologists.
“Radiologists do a good bit more than just read scans all day,” said Thomas Davenport, professor of information technology and management at Babson College and author of the recent book “Working with AI.”
“The only radiologists who are going to lose their jobs to AI are radiologists who refuse to work with AI,” Davenport said.
Ultimately, AI may pose the biggest threat to jobs that are somewhere in the middle — welleducated knowledge workers who don’t possess the elite skills of physicians or engineers, or toptier attorneys. Imagine a skilled legal researcher who finds that an AI can match the quality of his reports, but in half the time. Now say he goes back to school to become a financial analyst, only to find that AI is taking over that field as well.
But Autor says it needn’t be a zero-sum conflict in which the AI wins and the human loses. AI systems can be tailored to reinforce workers rather than replace them. Legal researchers or financial analysts could, in principle, learn to use AI tools to produce better reports in less time, making them more productive. In the long run, that could lead to increased demand for such workers.
Autor said AI could also increase the economic value of nurses and other health care workers. A study released last week found that ChatGPT gave better responses to some patients’ medical questions than did human physicians, as evaluated by health care professionals. This suggests that an AIassisted nurse or nurse practitioner could deliver many of the same services as an MD.
“That’s a much less expensive way to deliver a lot of day-to-day medical care,” Autor said.
Still, with AI systems seemingly getting smarter by the week, it’ll be a challenge for humans to keep up. There’s no easy way to prepare workers for that kind of competition, said Nir Eisikovits, professor of philosophy at UMass Boston. “Since we don’t know what the future brings, we don’t know what it takes to make students futureproof.”
Eisikovits believes the study of subjects like history, philosophy, and literature may be the best defense, because the liberal arts teach human skills such as empathy and critical thinking that can complement the computing power of AI.
“These are the kinds of flexible skills that stay relevant even if there’s a revolution in what kind of jobs exist,” he said.
In other words, mastering Plato or Shakespeare could become just as important as learning to code.
‘I do think it’s a really big deal . . . I don’t think it means the end of employment.’
DAVID AUTOR, MIT economist who is studying the impact of technology on the labor force