AI Armageddon is Here!

So, for the last decade I’ve been thinking and worrying about automation wiping through finance and eliminating jobs; thus, I’ve been trying to figure out an alternative approach to finance or some other type of job I could slide into using my skills.

Well, it looks like Armageddon is practically on our doorsteps.

Here’s a smattering of articles that popped up in the news since IBM’s CEO announced that there would be a hiring freeze in positions that could easily be done by AI:

• Business Insider: “Nearly 4,000 people lost their jobs last month because of AI — the first time that’s been cited as a reason, one report says”, Aaron McDade, June 2, 2023, link here.
• Fortune: The IMF’s No. 2 official says experts were wrong to ignore lost jobs from automation—and warns we ‘The IMF’s No. 2 official says experts were wrong to ignore lost jobs from automation—and warns we ‘don’t have the luxury of time’ to regulate A.I.”, Prarthana Prakash, June 6, 2023 – behind a paywall so if you have access to Fortune…
• Washington Post: ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners, Pranshu Verma and Gerrit De Vynck, June 2, 2023 – link here.

Here’s some interesting and important quotes from the Fortune article for those who can’t access the article:

Gopinath, a top deputy at the IMF, pointed to automation in manufacturing as an earlier example of how a new technology threatens jobs—and could have unintended political consequences. Economists had long argued that new machinery and technologies would make people more productive over time and drive costs of goods and services down.

But experts were wrong to predict that workers laid off due to automation would find new opportunities in different industries, Gopinath argued. “The lesson we have learned is that it was a very bad assumption to make,”

Fortune, “The IMF’s No. 2 official says experts were wrong to ignore lost jobs from automation – and warns we don’t have the luxury of time to regulate AI”, Prarthana Prakash, June 6, 2023

For those of you who are old enough, think back to the offshoring of manufacturing jobs. One of the arguments was that companies will fill in with new plants and new jobs; however, we all know what happened. Rusting towns and growing anger against globalization.

There was no training to reskill the population for new jobs, but then, new jobs really weren’t available.

I fear companies are going to make the same mistake with AI.

The engineers that are doing research to come up with these products say “oh, these AI are tools to complement humans, not replace them.” Oh, the naivete.

No, shareholders will not allow this. At the first sign of a downturn, the first thing managers will do is figure out where they can use AI instead of humans. This is the Milton Friedman way.

So, let’s not be naive about this and figure out how we can train and redeploy people. We can’t stop AI from happening (maybe slow it down) because the Pandora’s box been opened.

[By the way, I think that Sam Altman guy, the CEO of OpenAI that let loose ChatGPT into the world, who is going around the world warning of the dangers of AI and that politicians should regulate AI, is probably trying to deflect the eventual blame he’ll get when people start to get really angry or when things start to go wrong. He’s trying to get ahead of the eventual problems that will accrue and present a picture that he was trying to save everyone with his warnings.]

So, what do we do? I still don’t have any idea, even after studying and thinking about this for a decade. The only thing I can think of is to play, explore, experiment with ChatGPT, Bing AI and/or Bard to get familiar with the possibilities. Also, increase your creativity and problem-solving skills.

Go back to that list of skills the WEF and Microsoft created for the AI age.