The Future of Work: Humans, Robots, and Everything in Between

2-3 min read • 

AI has undoubtedly changed the landscape of our work and jobs with tools such as ChatGPT and Bard being able to generate text for any purpose; Dall-E, Midjourney and the like being able to generate images that graphic designers would charge a fortune for; and many others integrating AI's capabilities with day-to-day tasks to increase productivity. 

But what does this mean for the job market? AI has the capability to do almost anything that people are paying others to do, so how will these new tools affect work and job security?

Humans and Machines

While headlines nowadays scream "AI Steals Jobs," a closer look reveals the full equation. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report (as of October 27, 2023) states— AI will automate up to 800 million jobs by 2030, but will also create 950 million new ones. 

AI will easily replace the repetitive, monotonous jobs in our world, leaving us humans to take on the more skilled, creative work. There is no reason to compete with AI; no matter what we do, AI's advancement is inevitable and repetitive jobs will be replaced. Instead, we should focus on what AI cannot do and how we can overtake AI in creative ways. 

Imagine a surgeon using an AI guided scalpel to eliminate human error in a life-saving surgery, a financial analyst sifting through mountains of data with AI's help, or a writer brainstorming ideas with the latest large language models such as Chat-GPT.

AI can do the boring work for us while we take care of the more creative, productive tasks— a fantastic use of human-machine synergy.

What AI Can't Do:

While it's true that AI is on it's way to revolutionize the job market and take over what us humans are typically getting paid to do, it is important to consider human aspects that differentiate us from AI, the parts of us that define the border between human and machine.

One of these aspects is critical thinking and reasoning. While other AI models are great at this, the only reason that AI can "think" critically is because we gave it the data to do so beforehand— when an AI "thinks," it is only amalgamating bits and bobs of the information it was trained on and seamlessly interweaving them. 

Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to think for themselves. Humans are far better than AI at creative thinking, art, and critical reasoning— after all, the only reason that Dall-E can produce images or Chat-GPT can write essays is because we did it first.

Another aspect that makes us human is social and emotional intelligence. Although Google Bard can make me an email with an energetic tone, or a sober rejection letter for a company, the genuine feeling behind the email would not be reciprocated. 

To that extent, AI cannot "understand" what it is like to, say, fail an important test, beat a particularly difficult level in a game, or undergo any situation that evokes an emotion. While AI can sympathize and provide the appropriate reaction to any situation, it only does so because of what has been fed into it, not because what it actually feels. That right is reserved for living creatures alone.

As such, jobs that require a level of human intervention, such as therapy, art directors, and other jobs requiring human emotion and creative thinking, would be harder, if not impossible, to completely replace by AI. These jobs are bound to increase in popularity in the following years, underscoring what really makes us human and leading to a better society.

 

While AI is increasingly advancing in technology and skills and is on its course to take over our jobs, there will open new opportunities for us humans to do work that only we can do in the fields of creativity, human emotion, and everything else that makes us human. Although this change my upset some, AI's capabilities are inevitable, and will only help the greater good, leading to a more productive society for the years to come.